One was a plain bottle of pellets which might have been some homeopathic remedy.
“Whatever it is that is the matter with Eugenia,” remarked Atherton, “it seems to have baffled the doctors so far.”
Kennedy said nothing, but I saw that he had clumsily overturned the bottle and absently set it up again, as though his thoughts were far away. Yet with a cleverness that would have done credit to a professor of legerdemain he had managed to extract two or three of the pellets.
“Yes,” he said, as he moved slowly toward the staircase in the wide hall, “most baffling.”
Atherton was plainly disappointed. Evidently he had expected Kennedy to arrive at the truth and set matters right by some sudden piece of wizardry, and it was with difficulty that he refrained from saying so.
“I should like to meet Burroughs Atherton,” he remarked as we stood in the wide hall on the first floor of the big house. “Is he a frequent visitor?”
“Not frequent,” hastened Quincy Atherton, in a tone that showed some satisfaction in saying it. “However, by a lucky chance he has promised to call to-night—a mere courtesy, I believe, to Edith, since she has come to town on a visit.”
“Good!” exclaimed Kennedy. “Now, I leave it to you, Atherton, to make some plausible excuse for our meeting Burroughs here.”
“I can do that easily.”
“I shall be here early,” pursued Kennedy as we left.