“Yes, sir.”
There was a pause. An unaccountable whimsicality made me think of the game which children play, and which consists in sending someone out of the room and then hiding an article which the absent one is to find on his return. I felt almost inclined to cry hot and cold to the coroner as he hovered over the evidence. Not that I felt callous as to what might be going to occur. I had enjoyed life far too much. On the other hand, I had always reckoned the cost, and had never counted my chickens before they were hatched.
Mr. Gascoyne crossed over to me in the interval, and said in an undertone:
“What does it all mean?”
“I really do not know,” I said.
“Surely they are not trying to prove that his own servants poisoned him?”
“The poison must have come from somewhere.”
“Yes; that is obvious.”
He looked at me in some surprise. I noticed his almost startled expression, and began to analyse the remark I had made. Was it what I should have said had I been guiltless? If it had been, Mr. Gascoyne would not have displayed such discomfort—a vague discomfort, true, but an evidently indefinable sensation that something was wrong. He was from that moment uneasy about me, and yet almost unconscious of any uneasiness.
The other servants were recalled, and declared that neither of them had touched the wine. It would have been such an unusual thing that the one who had done so would have been noticed by the other. The claret was in a very peculiarly shaped flagon. By no possibility of means could anyone have mistaken it for the claret which was offered during the meal.