"If you have not been in intimate association with him for the last two months, you may absolve him from all suspicion," answered Dr. Westbrook. "You spoke to me the other day of dining very frequently with one particular friend; forgive me if I ask an unpleasant question. Is that friend a person whom you can trust?"
"That friend I could trust with a hundred lives, if I had them to lose," Douglas replied, warmly.
The doctor looked at his patient thoughtfully. He was a man of the world, and the warmth of Mr. Dale's manner told him that the friend in question was a woman.
"Has the person whom you trust so implicitly any beneficial interest in your death?" he asked.
"To some amount; but that person would gain much more by my continuing to live."
"Indeed; then we must needs fall back upon my original idea and painful as it may be to you, the old servant must become the object of your suspicion."
"I cannot believe him capable—"
"Come, come, Mr. Dale," interrupted the physician. "We must look at things as men of the world. It is your duty to ascertain by whom this poison has been administered, in order to protect yourself from the attacks of your insidious destroyer. If you will follow my advice, you will do this; if, on the other hand, you elect to shut your eyes to the danger that assails you, I can only tell you that you will most assuredly pay for your folly by the forfeit of your life."
"What am I to do?" asked Douglas.
"You say that your habits of life are almost rigid in their regularity. You always breakfast in your own chambers; you always dine and take your after-dinner coffee in the house of one particular friend. With the exception of a biscuit and a glass of sherry taken sometimes at your club, these two meals are all you take during the day. It is, therefore, an indisputable fact, that poison has bee a administered at one or other of these two meals. Your old butler serves one—the servants of your friend prepare the other. Either in your own chambers, or in your friend's house, you have a hidden foe. It is for you to find out where that foe lurks."