"I haven't asked you to be seated all this time," she said apologetically. "Please do—and I'll tell you all I can."
Garrison took a chair, while Dorothy sat near him. He thought he had never seen her in a mood of beauty more completely enthralling than this one of helplessness and bravery combined.
"We are quite, well—secure from being overheard?" he said.
She went at once and closed the door.
"Alice would never listen, greatly as she is worried," she said. "It was she who met you at the door—Foster's wife."
Garrison nodded. He was happy only when she came once more to her seat.
"This is your stepbrother's home?" he inquired. "Is he here?"
"This is Alice's property," Dorothy corrected. "But that's way ahead of the story. You told me my uncle was poisoned by my cigars. How could that possibly have been? How did you find it out? How was it done?"
"The box had been opened and two cigars had been so loaded with poison that when he bit off one, at the end, to light it up, he got the deadly stuff on his tongue—and was almost instantly stricken."
Despite the dimness of the light in the room Dorothy's face showed very white.