The other man laughed harshly, a discordant, jarring laugh which jangled on the tense air.
“Your accusation is too absurd to be resented. I knew that Miss Lawton herself could not have been a party to this melodramatic hoax!”
Blaine walked to the desk before replying, and taking up the crimson-tinged vial, weighed it in his hand.
“You did not find the poison bottle which you yourself thrust in that chair the night Pennington Lawton died, Mr. Rockamore, because his daughter discovered it and communicated with me,” he said. “She anticipated you by less than twenty-four hours. We have known from the beginning of your nocturnal visit to this room; every word of your conversation was overheard. It’s no use trying to bluff it; we’ve got a clear case against you.”
“You and your ‘clear case’ be d––d!” the other man cried, his tones shaking with anger. “You’re trying to bluff me, my man, but it won’t work! I don’t know what the devil you mean about a midnight visit to Lawton; the last I saw of him was at a directors’ meeting the afternoon before his death.”
“Then why has that chair––the chair in which he died––exerted such a peculiar, sinister influence over you? Why is it that every time you have entered this room since, you have been unable to keep away from it? Why, this very hour, when you thought yourself unobserved, did you walk straight to this chair and place your hand deliberately upon the place where the poison bottle was concealed? Why did you recoil? Why did that cry rise from your lips when you saw what it contained?”
“I touched the chair inadvertently, while I waited for Miss Lawton’s appearance, and my hand coming accidentally in contact with a hard substance, mere idle curiosity impelled me to draw it out. Naturally, I was startled for the moment, when I saw what it was.” The man’s voice deepened hoarsely, and he gave vent to another sneering, vicious laugh. As its echo died in the room, Blaine could have sworn that he heard a quick gasp from behind the curtains of the window-seat, but it did not reach the ears of Rockamore.
The latter continued, his voice breaking suddenly, with a rage at last uncontrolled:
“I could not, of course, know that that bottle of red ink was a cheap, theatrical trick of a mountebank, a creature who is the laughing-stock of the press and the public, in his idiotic attempts to draw sensational notoriety upon himself. But I do know that this effort has failed! You have dared to plant this outrageous, puerile trap to attempt to ensnare me! You have dared to strike blindly, in your mad thirst for publicity, at a man infinitely beyond your reach. Your insolence ceases to be amusing! If you try to push this ridiculous accusation, I shall ruin you, Henry Blaine!”