Wimble stood looking after his visitor till he was out of sight, and then walked slowly back into his museum to operate upon the dead bird, which lay where he had placed it upon a shelf ready for skinning.
“Ah,” he said mournfully, as he rubbed his nose slowly with the cork of the little bottle, “what a world of deception it is. There is nothing honest. Were all more or less like specimens. A front, and me not to have known it all this time. If she had taken me sooner into her confidence, I wouldn’t have cared. The doctor did. Hah! I wonder who ever suspected him, with his clear dark locks, as I keep so right. Yes, he’s a deceiver, and without me what would he look like in a couple of months?—Deceit, deceit, deceit.—And I trusted her so. It’s taking a mean advantage of a man.
“Well, it was a mark of confidence, and perhaps I have been all wrong. It shows she is waiting to trust me, and ought I to? Well, we shall see.”
Michael Wimble looked a little brighter, and then his eyes fell upon the bottle, which he shook as the doctor had shaken it, took out the cork, applied a finger to it, and tasted in the same way, quickly spitting it out as he became aware of the sharp taste.
“What did he say: chloral? Don’t take any of it. No, I sha’n’t do that.”
Wimble suddenly became thoughtful and dreamy as he replaced the cork, and he seemed to see the bright ray of light once more on the dry patch of sand beyond where the tide had reached.
Then he thought about Gartram’s death by chloral.
“Might have been the same bottle,” he said thoughtfully; “took what he wanted, and then threw it out of the window.”
He looked at the tiny drop in the bottom, turned it over and over, and his thoughts seemed to run riot in his brain, till he grew confused at their number. But after a time he followed the one theme again.
“What a piece of evidence to have brought up at the inquest. How important a witness I should have been. But why should he have thrown the bottle out of the window? He didn’t poison himself. He wasn’t the man to do that. Thousands upon thousands of money. Everything he could wish for. Regular king of the place. He wouldn’t do that—he couldn’t.”