“What do you mean to do?”
“Tell Mrs. Warnham—with her husband listening.”
Dr. Eden followed him out like a man going to be hanged.
Mrs. Warnham indeed met them in her hall. “Mr. Fortune,”—she took his hand, she had won back her old calm, but her eyes grew dark as she looked at him—“Gerald has been asking for you. And I want to speak to you.”
“I shall be glad to talk over the case with you and Captain Warnham,” said Reggie gravely. “I’ll see the small boy first, if you don’t mind.” And the small boy kept his Mr. Fortune a long time.
Mrs. Warnham had her husband with her when the doctors came down. “I say, Fortune,” Captain Warnham started up, “awfully good of you to take so much trouble. I mean to say,”—he cleared his throat—“I feel it, you know. How is the little beggar?”
“There’s no reason why he shouldn’t do well,” Reggie said slowly. “But it’s a strange case. Captain Warnham. Yes, a strange case. You may take it, there is no doubt the child was poisoned.”
“Poisoned!” Warnham cried out in that queer hoarse voice.
“You mean it was something Gerald shouldn’t have eaten?” Mrs. Warnham said gently.
“It was arsenic, Captain Warnham. Not much more than an hour before the time he felt ill, perhaps less, he had swallowed enough arsenic to kill him.”