“I didn’t know.” Keeping her eyes fixed upon him like a watchful animal, she slowly backed to interpose the table between herself and a possible interference. Her arm, still stiffly pressed to her side, impeded her fumbling efforts to open the box. Presently, however, the cover yielded.
He measured the chances of intervention, and abandoned the hope. His brain hummed with a thousand conjectures, a thousand questions centering upon her obvious and preposterous purpose. Suddenly, as her fingers trembled among the tablets, his thoughts steadied and his stratagem was formed.
“What do you want with my tonic?” he asked coolly.
“Tonic? I—I thought—”
“You thought it was the poison. Well, you’ve got the wrong box. The poison box is in the drawer.”
“In the drawer,” she repeated. She spoke in the mechanical voice of one desperately intent upon holding the mind to some vital project. Her nerveless hands fumbled at the side of the desk.
He crossed quickly, caught up the box which she had just relinquished, and dropped it into his pocket.
“Oh!” she moaned, and stared at him with stricken and accusing eyes. “Then it was the poison!”
“Yes.”
“Give it back to me!” she implored, like a bereft child. “Oh, give it to me!”