Wimble stood with his brow wrinkled up, and then all at once, as if startled by the suddenness of a thought, he dropped the bottle on the oilcloth and drew back, gazing at it in a horrified way, his eyes dilating, and the white showing all round.
“Somebody must have given it to him.”
“No, no. They wouldn’t do that; it would be murder. No one would try to murder him.”
He passed his hand over his forehead, and drew it away quite wet.
“His money!” he half whispered, as the thought seemed to grow and grow. “They say he kept thousands up there. Or some one who hated him, as lots of people did.”
Wimble dropped into his shaving chair, and sat thinking of the numbers of workpeople who had quarrelled with Gartram and spoken threateningly; but he did not feel that it was possible for any one of these to have done such a deed.
“Some one who hated him—some one who wanted to get rid of him—some one who, who—no, no, no, it’s too horrible to think about. I wouldn’t know if I could.”
He lifted the little bottle between his finger and thumb, and drew back with his arm extended to the utmost to hurl the little vessel across the road, and right out toward the sea.
But he checked himself thoughtfully, drew back, and went across his shop to the side. Here he stood, bottle in hand, thinking deeply, before slowly opening the drawer and placing it in a corner.
“It would be very valuable,” he said softly, “if that was the bottle some one used to poison the old man; and if it was, why, I haven’t got a specimen in my museum that would attract people half so much. ‘The Danmouth murder; the bottle that held the poison,’ Why, they’d come in hundreds to see it.”