“I'm telling you a good deal, doctor,” he said. “But as you know so much already, I'll tell you a bit more. Look at this!”
He opened his hand and showed Bryce a small cardboard pill-box, across the face of which a few words were written—One after meals—Mr. Collishaw.
“Whose handwriting's that?” demanded Mitchington.
Bryce looked closer, and started.
“Ransford's!” he muttered. “Ransford—of course!”
“That box was in Collishaw's waistcoat pocket,” said Mitchington. “There are pills inside it, now. See!” He took off the lid of the box and revealed four sugar-coated pills. “It wouldn't hold more than six, this,” he observed.
Bryce extracted a pill and put his nose to it, after scratching a little of the sugar coating away.
“Mere digestive pills,” he announced.
“Could—it!—have been given in one of these?” asked Mitchington.
“Possible,” replied Bryce. He stood thinking for a moment. “Have you shown those things to Coates and Everest?” he asked at last.