The old physician came hurrying to the inn next morning. He was utterly confounded by the scarcely escaped horrors.
"You really look," he said to Toni, "as if you had swallowed some of the stuff, too."
"Oh, I suppose my fate will overtake me in the end," she answered with a weary smile. "I feel it in my bones: there will be some misfortune in our house."
"For heaven's sake!" he cried, "Put that red-headed beast into the street."
"It isn't she! I'll take my oath on that," she said eagerly and thought that she had done a wonderfully clever thing.
She waited in suspense, fearing that the authorities would take a closer look at this last incident. She was equipped for any search—even one that might penetrate to her own bed-room. For she had put false bottoms into the little medicine-boxes. Beneath these she kept the arsenic. On top lay harmless magnesia. The boxes themselves stood on her toilet-table, exposed to all eyes and hence withdrawn from all suspicion.
She waited till evening, but nobody came. And yet the connection between this incident and the former one seemed easy enough to establish. However that might be, she assigned the final deed to the very next day. And why wait? An end had to be made of this torture of hesitation which, at every new scruple, seemed to freeze her very heart's blood. Furthermore the finding of the "crow's eyes" would be of use in leading justice astray.
To-morrow, then … to-morrow….
Weigand had gone to bed early. But Toni sat behind the door of the public room and, through a slit of the door, listened to every movement of the waitress. She had kept near her all evening. She scarcely knew why. But a strange, dull hope would not die in her—a hope that something might happen whereby her unsuspecting victim and herself might both be saved.
The clock struck one. The public rooms were all but empty. Only a few young clerks remained. These were half-drunk and made rough advances to the waitress.