“Ha!” he screamed in a falsetto of fury, “not yet, little man, not yet!”
With that he raised the pistol, and fired point-blank at the detective. Furneaux ducked, and seized a small stone, being otherwise quite unarmed. He threw it with unerring aim, and, as was determined subsequently, struck the hand holding the weapon. Possibly, almost by a miracle, the blow caused a faulty pressure, because the action jammed, though the pistol itself was most accurate and deadly in its properties.
By this time Winter, sweeping Peters aside, was within ten feet of the maniac, who turned and ran into the shop. The door, a solid one, fitted with a spring lock, slammed in the Chief Inspector’s face, and resisted a mighty effort to burst it open. A few yards away stood an empty, two-wheeled cart, uptilted, and Winter demanded the help of a few men who had gathered on seeing or hearing the hubbub.
“I call on you in the King’s name!” he shouted. “We must force that door! Then stand clear, all of you!”
He raced to the cart, and, when his object was perceived, willing hands assisted in converting the heavy vehicle into a battering-ram. The gradient of the hill favored the attack, which was made at an acute angle, and the first assault smashed the lock. There were a couple of seconds’ delay while the cart was backed out, and the detectives rushed in, Furneaux leading, because Winter gave his great physical strength to the shafts. But the Chief Inspector grabbed his tiny friend by the collar as the latter darted around the counter and into the dispensary in the rear.
“Two of us can’t go abreast, and you’ll only get hurt,” he said, speaking with a calmness that was majestic in the circumstances.
“The nicotine is gone!” yelped Furneaux; both saw that the safe stood open.
Behind the dispensary was a small passage, whence the stairs mounted, and a door led to the kitchen. That door was closed now, though it was open when Furneaux ransacked the house. Therefore, they made that way at once. No ordinary lock could resist Winter’s shoulder, and he soon mastered this barrier. But the kitchen was empty—the outer door locked but unbolted. Since it is practically impossible for the strongest man to pull a door open, the two made for the window, and tore at screws and catch with eager fingers. Furneaux, light and nimble-footed, scrambled through first, so it was he who found Siddle lying in the orchard beyond the wall of the yard. The unhappy wretch had swallowed nearly the whole remaining contents of the bottle of nicotine, or enough to poison a score of robust men. He presented a lamentable and distressing spectacle. Some of the more venturesome passers-by, who had crowded after the detectives and Peters, could not bear to look on, and slunk away in horror.
Furneaux soon brought an emetic, which failed to act. Siddle breathed his last while the glass was at his lips.
In that moment of crisis only three men did not lose their heads. Winter cleared away the gapers, while Furneaux remained with the body. P. C. Robinson came up the hill at a run, and was sent for a stretcher, bringing from Hobbs’s shop the very one on which the ill-fated Adelaide Melhuish was carried from the river bank.