"I suppose you know," pursued Kennedy, deliberately, without letting up on the pressure, "that traces of belladonna were found in one glass on Mr. Wilford's desk at the office and that an almost empty bottle of belladonna was found by the police here in your apartment?"
"It was mine," she asserted, calmly, as though prepared. "It had been nearly used up. Celeste knows all about how I used it for my eyes. Many women do. She can tell you that."
She said it boldly, and yet, since Kennedy had mentioned the Calabar bean, I had an indefinable feeling that Honora was concealing something—perhaps not only a fact—but also a great fear.
No longer, now, did Kennedy seem to care whether he antagonized her or not. More and more, it seemed, it was his purpose to drop the mask with her, to fight her with other weapons than those psychological.
"Both physostigmine and belladonna are used by oculists, you know," hinted Kennedy, broadly.
The face of Honora was a study as she listened to this direct insinuation. She bit her lips at the thought that she had betrayed her knowledge of the use of belladonna.
For an instant Honora gazed at Kennedy, startled at the penetrating power of his eyes, as she realized that the finding of the bean had, in his mind, perhaps, some connection with herself.
What must have been the conflicting emotions in her mind as, now, for the first time, she realized that Kennedy had gone deeper into the case than Doyle or Leslie, that, while she might be a match for them, she could not possibly hope to be a match against the new weapons of science that Kennedy had brought to bear? Even though she might not fully appreciate them, Honora was too clever a woman not to know, merely by intuition, that she was faced with a battle in which the old weapons were unavailing.
I know the thoughts that were surging, by Kennedy's suggestion, through her mind—the past of her life, her father, Honore Chappelle; the old love-affair with Shattuck; the attainment of social ambitions with Wilford—and back again to the life of her girlhood and the profession of her father.
I thought for the moment that Craig had broken through her reserve. I knew that Kennedy was in reality fishing—at least I thought so. But it was evident by her actions that Honora did not know it.