“Good Heavens! you haven’t killed Professor O’Flather?”
“No, no, but I have keel ze troupe; Batsheba, all, all; dead, keel by my hand, keel in revenge. Oh I am so wicked! I hate myself.”
I stared at her. “In the name of Heaven, what have you done?”
For answer she pulled from the pocket of her mantle a tin canister of fair size and handed it to me. By the lamplight I could just make out the label:
SKEETER’S INSECT POWDER.
A light dawned on me. “You don’t mean to say you’ve fed ’em on this?”
“Yes, yes, all of eet. I have spare nossing. I was mad. Oh I ’ate heem so! And now I’m ’fraid. If he finds me he will keel me, certainly. He’s bad man. Oh don’t let heem find me!”
She clutched my arm in her terror.
“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “But first, let’s destroy the evidence of your crime.”
I flung the canister into the river, where we heard a faint splash.