"It is dead," answered Elettra, still on the floor, and thrusting her long, thin arm under the piece of furniture. "But I cannot pull him out," she added. "He is so big!"
She got upon her feet, and together, without much difficulty, the two dragged the chest of drawers away from the wall, and then bent down behind it, with the candle, to look at the dead animal.
"It is quite dead," said Elettra. "Poor beast! What can have happened to it?" Veronica was really sorry, but of the two the maid had been the more fond of the cat. "It must have eaten something."
Elettra looked up, suspiciously, and Veronica drew back a step, half straightening herself. Her foot touched something close to the wall. She stooped again and picked up the package of rat-poison which Matilda had hidden under the chest of drawers on the previous night. She looked at it closely. It had evidently not lain long where she had found it, for there was no dust on it, and the coarse paper had an unmistakably fresh look. The indication of the contents was written upon it in ink, in illiterate characters.
"It is rat-poison!" exclaimed Veronica. "The cat must have eaten some of it! How did it come here?"
She looked at her maid curiously.
"The cat could not have wrapped it up and folded in the ends of the paper," observed Elettra.
"That is true."
They looked at each other, in considerable astonishment. Then they talked about it. Veronica asked whether Elettra had complained that there were mice in her room, and whether some stupid servant, having a package of rat-poison at hand, had not stuck it under the chest of drawers, not even thinking of opening the paper. Elettra was suspicious.
"At all events, Excellency," she said, "remember that you found it, and that it was carefully closed."