“Oh, yes, sir.”
“Tell how you did it, where you did it and what Mr. Bartholomew said while you were doing it—that is, if he said anything at all.”
“The bottle holding this medicine was kept, as I have already said, with all the other medicines, in the cabinet hanging in the upper passageway.” Every eye rose to the chart. “The water in a pitcher on the large table to the left of the fire-place. Filling a glass with this water which I had drawn myself, I went to the medicine cabinet and got the bottle containing the drops the doctor had ordered for this purpose, and carrying it over to the table, together with the medicine-dropper, added the customary ten drops to the water and put the bottle back in the cabinet and the glass with the medicine in it on the shelf. Mr. Bartholomew’s face was turned my way and he naturally followed my movements as I passed to and fro; but he showed no especial interest in them, nor did he speak.”
“Was this before or after you dropped the curtain on the other side of the bed.”
“After.”
“The bed, I have been given to understand, is surrounded on all sides by heavy curtains which can be pulled to at will. Was the one you speak of the only one to be dropped or pulled at night?”
“Usually. You see Miss Orpha’s picture hangs between the windows and was company for him if he chanced to wake in the night.”
Again that sob, but fainter than before and to me very far off. Or was it that I felt so far removed myself—pushed aside and back from the grief and sufferings of this family?
The heads which turned at this low but pathetic sound were soon turned back again as the steady questioning went on:
“You speak of going to the medicine cabinet. It was your business, no doubt, to go there often.”