Barclay, realizing the room was not open for guests, started to retreat, when he caught sight of a silver flask lying among the desk ornaments, and moved by curiosity he picked it up and examined the intricate scroll work by aid of the droplight. The design was identical with the chrysanthemum pattern on his flask. In every way, style and size, the two flasks were mates, if not the same.
Barclay started as the bare possibility occurred to him, and broke into a profuse perspiration. Pshaw! he was mad! He had last seen his flask in the possession of Dwight Tilghman on the express train—it was beyond probability to find it on the desk of the Japanese Ambassador! Beyond probability, yes; but not beyond possibility—had he not seen Ito in the dining room, and evidence went to prove that Ito had poisoned Tilghman. If he had placed that poison in Barclay’s flask, what more likely than his leaving such incriminating evidence where it might never be found and traced?
Barclay held the flask up to the light and tilted it. A little liquid remained in it, and he came to a quick decision.
On entering the room Barclay had failed to note that at its far corner it opened into a conservatory, and as he pocketed the flask, he did not see the red glow of a cigar among the leaves of the tropical plants.
CHAPTER VII
THE LESSON
Two weeks had glided by and Julian Barclay was no nearer solving the mystery surrounding the death of Dwight Tilghman than the day the crime was committed. He had turned in despair to a more fascinating enigma—Ethel Ogden; and too late he realized that she was becoming all in all to him, and his stifled conscience gave him little peace when away from her bewitching presence. Ethel, to the secret indignation of her cousin, Mrs. Ogden, did not discourage his attentions, closing her eyes to the future and to James Patterson’s growing fury.
“You must talk to her, Jane,” declared Walter Ogden, as Ethel bidding them a laughing good-by, left the house to give her Tuesday morning lesson to Maru Takasaki. “This flirtation cannot keep up. Ethel is treating Jim Patterson shamefully if, as you have given me to understand”—shooting a keen look at her from under his shaggy eyebrows, “Ethel has virtually accepted him.”
Mrs. Ogden flushed; she was prone to exaggeration, and with her to wish a thing was often to state its materialization.
“I am greatly surprised at Ethel,” she replied, carefully avoiding a direct answer. “She must realize the desirability of the match. Aside from Mr. Patterson’s agreeable personality—why, every mother with marriageable daughters has angled for him—he is madly in love with Ethel, I know that.”
“Then, if such is the case there is certainly no excuse for Ethel’s playing Barclay against him,” Ogden dug his pen viciously into the inkstand. “It’s a great pity, Jane, that you ever invited Barclay here; wasn’t there some old scandal”—and he puckered his forehead in thought.