“Have you found what you were looking for?”
“Yes.”
“But you are going to clear the lot while you are about it, eh!”
“Yes.” And looking at me queerly, and mimicking the little exclamation with which I had finished my own sentence, he added, “There might be something else, eh!”
He continued to stare, his eyes looking for all the world like a couple of bright blue buttons stuck in his big red face, and then he surprised me by asking, “Do your initials happen to be F. H., Mr. Jeffcock?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
But I never got an answer to my question. He turned abruptly and walked away, ignoring me rudely and completely. I half thought of following him to make further inquiry, but his broad solid back and his thick bull neck both looked unresponsive, so I mastered my curiosity, and crossing the lawn to the cedar tree, sat down in the shade to wait for The Tundish.
I was beginning to think that he must have forgotten me, when Margaret hurried to me. “He wants us both in the dispensary,” she said, before she reached me, and turned quickly back to the house beckoning me to follow.
He got up from the desk as we entered, and placed the prescription book, in which he had been writing, on the table that stood in the middle of the room. Then he took three bottles and a taper medicine glass from the shelves over the bench, and put them on the table by the book. He was solemn and portentous. Margaret and I were silent as we stood and watched him.
“I am going to prepare some medicine for Ethel,” he informed us when he had got everything ready, “and in the circumstances I feel that I should like you to see me make it up. I can’t explain my wish in so many words; in fact, I really don’t quite know why I want you to be here. If I wanted to poison Ethel, I could of course do it with the greatest ease while you both stand looking on. For instance, you can check the prescription which I have written out in full, and you can check the bottles with the prescription, but you can’t possibly be sure that I haven’t already tampered with the bottles. So you see it is all rather farcical, and yet I do very definitely feel that I should like you to witness me making it up.”