"Perhaps the woman had nothing to do with it. Vantine himself told me that he was going to make a careful examination of the cabinet. No doubt that is exactly what he was doing when the woman's arrival interrupted him. He might have let her out of the house himself, and then, returning to the cabinet, stumbled upon the secret drawer after she had gone."
"Yes; that is quite possible, too. At any rate, you agree with me that both men were killed in some such way as I have described?"
"Absolutely. I think there can be no doubt of it."
"There are objections—and rather weighty ones. The theory explains the two deaths, it explains the similarity of the wounds, it explains how both should be on the right hand just above the knuckles, it explains why both bodies were found in the same place since both men started to summon help. But, in the first place, if the Frenchman got the drawer open, who closed it?"
"Perhaps it closed itself when he let go of it."
"And closed again after Vantine opened it?"
"Yes."
"It would take a very clever mechanism to do that."
"But at least it's possible."
"Oh, yes; it's possible. And we must remember that the poisoners of those days were very ingenious. That was the heydey of La Voisin and the Marquise de Brinvilliers, of Elixi, and heaven knows how many other experts who had followed Catherine de Medici to France. So that's all quite possible. But there is one thing that isn't possible, and that is that a poison which, if it is administered as we think it is, must be a liquid, could remain in that cabinet fresh and ready for use for more than three hundred years. It would have dried up centuries ago. Nor would the mechanism stay in order so long. It must be both complicated and delicate. Therefore it would have to be oiled and overhauled from time to time. If it is worked by a spring—and I don't see how else it can be worked—the spring would have to be renewed and wound up."