"And," said I, "with my own hand I altered your formula."
Had Brande's heart stopped beating, his face could not have become more distorted and livid. He moved close to me, and, glaring into my eyes, hissed out:
"You altered my formula?"
"I did," I answered recklessly. "I multiplied your figures by ten where they struck me as insufficient."
"When?"
I strode closer still to him and looked him straight in the eyes while I spoke.
"That night in the Red Sea, when Edith Metford, by accident, mixed morphia in your medicine. The night I injected a subtle poison, which I picked up in India once, into your blood while you slept, thereby baffling some of the functions of your extraordinary brain. The night when in your sleep you stirred once, and had you stirred twice, I would have killed you, then and there, as ruthlessly as you would kill mankind now. The night I did kill your lieutenant, Rockingham, and throw his body overboard to the sharks."
Brande did not speak for a moment. Then he said in a gentle, uncomplaining voice:
"So it now devolves on Grey. The end will be the same. The Labrador expedition will succeed where I have failed." To Natalie: "You had better go. There will only be an explosion. The island will probably disappear. That will be all."
"Do you remain?" she asked.