Dollar had dropped into his elaborate old chair; the bent head between his hands drooped over its own reflection in the monastic writing-table.
"Who rang up?" asked the man on his legs.
"Some of your people."
"Was that all they had to tell you?"
"That was all; we shan't have long to wait for the rest."
"Where did he buy it?"
"At his own chemist's—'to put a poor old dog out of its misery!' His very words, Vinson, so they tell me! I shall hear them all my life."
"And it has taken all night to learn this, has it, from the chemist's where the poor devil dealt!"
Dollar understood this outburst of truculent emotion.
"That was my fault," said he. "I told them to confine their attention to entries made in the poison books after five o'clock yesterday afternoon. Edenborough had signed his name and got the stuff earlier in the day."