"Your father's child?"
"My father's child. Cyril is sixteen this birthday—a nice lad, but with all the Latin traits of his mother's race—those traits which mix so badly with our Scotch character, Mr. Narkom. Paula has planned this thing from the beginning—slowly, secretly, steadily. She has planned to wrest the estates from Ross, to turn his own father against him, so that at the last he will remake his will and leave all that he possesses to Cyril—and rob Ross of his rightful inheritance!"
"My dear lady, have you any foundation for believing this?" put in Mr. Narkom at this juncture, as she paused. "An ambitious woman is not necessarily a potential murderess, you know."
"But this one is. One can see it in her eyes when she looks at Ross, and one can read it in every gesture—every thought that passes across her face. She is a dangerous woman, Mr. Narkom, who will stop at nothing. Her own father, I believe, had a career that was shrouded in mystery, so far as we can trace, but there was theft in it, and crime, too—that much I have ascertained. His daughter is the fitting descendant of the family. I repeat, there is nothing she will stop at—nothing!—and now that Ross has taken up with this electricity installation—he has been mad on engineering ever since he was big enough to toddle, but Father would not permit him to go in for it—Lady Paula has used it to her own desperate plans, and has practically succeeded in turning Father against Ross, so that the two hardly speak when they meet, and avoid each other as much as possible in the daily round of life."
"And what, my dear young lady, makes you think that—er—Lady Paula would wish to murder your father?"
"My eyes—and my ears, too. Both of which are sharper than one might imagine. When Paula mixes my father's food—he is an old man and full of whims and cranks, Mr. Narkom, and he has been much attached to his second wife and trusts her absolutely—and at night he takes bread-and-milk for supper, nothing else. And no one but Paula must make it. She has a little sitting-room of her own just off my father's study, where there is a little gas-stove and all the necessary paraphernalia for mixing an invalid's food, and last week I made a point of going in to watch her—found an excuse to get some note-paper and stepped into the room quietly. She was stirring the milk in the saucepan, and in her hand was a little phial of some whitish powder which she was just about to empty into it when the sound of my step startled her. Instantly she swung round, went as pale as death, and clapped her hand to her heart. 'How you startled me!' she exclaimed. 'You should not enter the room so softly, Maud. It is dangerous.' 'Not more dangerous than what you are at present doing,' I wanted to answer, but I dared not. I had no proof, and to accuse her without it might only make Father turn entirely from Ross and me in his quick-tempered, irascible fashion. But she slipped the phial into her pocket and finished making the bread-and-milk while I fumbled in the stand where the house paper is kept, all the time watching her from the tail of my eye. And I could see how her hands trembled, Mr. Narkom, so that she slopped the milk over into the saucer from the cup. It's poisoning she is practising upon him— I know it, intuitively!" She clenched her hand, and sent an agonized look into the Superintendent's face. "And all because she is determined to get the estates for Cyril, and then kill poor Father, and take everything, and turn us all out of our rightful home!"
Mr. Narkom took out his handkerchief and wiped the beads of perspiration from his brow. The day was warm, and this excitable and evidently very much upset young woman only made matters warmer.
"Come, come," he said in his paternal way. "Isn't that going a little too far—to accuse a woman of poisoning upon such slight evidence? How is your father's health?"
"Failing every day. Every day he grows weaker, but he will see no doctor—does not believe in them and will never let one enter his house if it can be avoided. But he is weakening steadily. And it is not because of his seventy-six years, either, for a haler and heartier man never lived—until Paula started this wicked thing upon him, and began making him bread-and-milk for supper. She says he eats too heavily; that it is not good for him. And Father takes every word as law."
"A somewhat unwise course with any woman—begging your pardon," put in Mr. Narkom with a smile. "And now tell me what arrangements your father has made for the future of his second wife and her son. Or don't you know?"