“Well, there is no harm done, and I don’t mind telling you—no, after all, I think that perhaps I had better not.”
I thought how annoying his little habit of starting out on some interesting confidential statement and then breaking off in the middle of it was, but obviously I could not press him, and I said good night again and went up-stairs to bed.
To bed but not to sleep. For interminable hours I checked the quarters chimed by the great cathedral clock. And when sleep did come it was thin and dream-streaked. Once more I was in the dispensary standing in front of the poison cupboard with the murderous little bottle of poison in my hands. The Tundish—not the placid kindly man to whom I had said good night, but a man with the face of a devil enraged—came rushing at me round the table in the middle of the room. “Put it down, you damned fool,” he yelled, and seizing me by the arm he twisted it back until my hand was thrust inside the safe. Then in a flash his anger was gone, The Tundish was masked and placid again, and, looking at me with a pleasant quiet smile, he said in the friendliest and silkiest of voices: “Poisoned, I fancy, my dear Jeffcock—better have it off,” and he closed the heavy door with a crash, severing my hand above the wrist.
I heard a tinkle of broken glass as the baby flagon dropped among its deadly little comrades, and then a plop as my own severed hand reached the bottom of the safe and I awoke with a start to hear a door really banging in the hall below. Then giggles, and Stella’s carrying, high-pitched voice: “Oh! for heaven’s sake don’t make me laugh any more, my sides are sore and aching as it is.” Next a noisy laugh from Ralph, and Kenneth whispering—he meant it for a whisper—and urging him not to wake up Jeffcock and The Tundish.
The dancers were back home and coming up-stairs to bed. They laughed and played about on the landing, and made as much noise again in urging one another to stop. I thought how selfish and inconsiderate they were. Then I heard Stella and Ralph go up to the landing above and their doors bang shut. It was nearly three o’clock when at last I fell into a quiet and untroubled sleep.
I woke surprisingly refreshed and got down-stairs to find The Tundish seated in lonely state at the head of the breakfast table. He greeted me with his friendly smile, asking whether I had been able to sleep through the dancing party’s united efforts to keep one another quiet. He told me that the thermometer had already beaten the record of yesterday at the same time, and that we were in for a frizzly time at the club.
Stella came in just as we were finishing our last cups of coffee and I noticed at once how wretchedly tired and pale she looked. The doctor remarked on it too, and she told us that she had hardly slept and had wakened almost too weary to dress. On learning that she had been sleeping badly for some nights he promised to put up a mild narcotic for her to take that night. He was kindness and tact itself in that he made no reference to the dance and his own neglected advice, but Stella almost snubbed him for his trouble, and hardly bothering to thank him turned to me with some casual remark or other.
Ethel, with Kenneth and Ralph, came in as the doctor was talking to Stella, and Margaret, pink and white and full-blown, Margaret smiling to herself, followed them a moment later. I was looking at her as she came in through the door, and whether I unconsciously stared a little I don’t know, but the pleasant smile vanished, to be replaced by an unpleasant frown.
The Tundish was right. We had a very warm time at the club that day, but in spite of my cold I enjoyed the tennis and in spite of her conversation I enjoyed my partner. She and I had lunch alone together, and Stella was one of the many subjects we discussed.
“Do you think that she is very bewitching?” she asked.