The long side curtains of the four-post bedstead were stretched across it, and as Miriam laid her hand on one of them to draw it aside, Alan Mason checked her.
“I found this wad of cotton under the bed,” he began. “Had you any occasion last night to use chloroform?”
“No.” Miriam looked at him in startled wonder. “No.”
“Then,” Roberts scanned her closely, “how comes it that you, a trained nurse, are unaware that you were chloroformed?”
Slowly Miriam took in the meaning of his words. “Chloroformed?” she gasped. “I?”
It was Alan Mason who answered and not Doctor Roberts. “I detected the odor of chloroform when I carried you to your bedroom,” he said. “So then I came in here—found my cousin, Paul, dead—and this cotton under the bed.”
Miriam stared at her companions in dumbfounded silence for a moment. “My attack of nausea—” she faltered.
“Was the result of the chloroform,” declared Doctor Roberts. His voice deepened. “We also detected its odor about Paul Abbott.”
“Good God!” Miriam drew back. “Was Mr. Abbott anesthetized?”
Roberts’ gaze never left her face in the lengthened pause.