"Every step of the way. If you had looked for me you would have seen me on the train. What do you say now? Are we friends or foes?"
"Friends," cried Dr. Cooper eagerly. "Friends. I am on your side. I will conceal nothing."
Was it my fancy that there was a movement in the wall between the room we were in and that occupied by Mr. Nisbet? It must have been, I thought, for upon looking more closely I saw nothing to confirm the fancy, and I ascribed it to the fever and excitement of the scene of which I was a witness.
"You are wise," said Rivers, "though I take it upon myself to declare that, with or without your assistance, we can bring his guilt home to him. There are others in the house as well as ourselves. Two of our friends are at this moment stationed outside Mr. Nisbet's door. He is doomed, if ever man was. If he knows a prayer it is time for him to say it."
CHAPTER XXX.
[MR. NISBET TAKES A DECIDED STEP.]
"The evidence, then, you gave at the inquest," continued Rivers, "whether false or true (you see I am not disposed to be hard on you), was conclusive, and doubtless you were well paid for it. In the eyes of the law Mr. Nisbet's stepdaughter was dead, and he came into her fortune. The simplicity of the whole thing would be amusing if it were not tragic. But his task was not yet finished. He had committed an error of judgment in killing the wrong woman; the lady whom he had robbed of her fortune still lived, and it was imperative that he should get rid of her. He must have been in fear of detection, or he would have adopted some violent and summary measures to compass his objects. Being fearful of consequences he determined to kill her slowly, and it was also necessary that he should destroy her memory, that he should make her mind a blank, for if by any chance the news of the tragedy which had taken place in Lamb's Terrace reached her knowledge the game would be lost. According to the way I reason it out he hoped that the drugs he administered to her would cause her to die a presumably natural death, but the lady was obstinate, and refused to die as he wished. At length, weary of waiting, he calls you in to assist him."
"You are on the wrong track," said Dr. Cooper. "I have never seen the lady."
"You are in your right senses, I presume," said Rivers. "The lady happens to be in this house."
"In this house?"