I nodded. I could see that the trade done there was infinitesimal and quite insufficient to pay the rent; besides, was not the fact that Lily had been compelled to go out and earn her own living proof in itself that the strange-looking old fellow was the reverse of prosperous? The herbal trade in London is nearly as dead as the manufacture of that once popular metal known as German silver.
“Lily has gone to see an aunt of hers over at Battersea,” the old man explained. “But she’ll be home at five. She’s got her holidays now, and, poor girl, she’s been sadly disappointed. She expected to go down to her married sister at Huntingdon, but couldn’t go because her sister’s laid up with rheumatic fever. So she has to stay at home this year. And this place isn’t much of a change for her.”
I glanced around at the dark, close little den, and at the strong-smelling shop beyond, and was fain to admit that he spoke the truth.
“I suppose your friend, Mr Cleugh, is busy as usual with his murders and his horrors?” he remarked, smiling. “He’s a wonderful acute fellow. I always read the paper every day, and am generally interested in the results of the inquiries by the Comet man. Half London reads his interviews and latest details.”
“Yes,” I answered. “He’s kept hard at work always. There seems to be a never-ceasing string of sensations nowadays. As soon as one mystery is elucidated another springs up somewhere else.”
“Ah,” he answered, his dark eyes gazing at me through his heavy-rimmed glasses, “it was always so. Never a day goes past without a mystery of some sort or another.”
“I suppose,” I said, “if the truth were told, more people are poisoned in London than ever the police or the public imagine.” I knew that all herbalists were versed in toxicology more or less, and had a vague idea that I might learn something from him.
“Of course,” he answered, “there are several poisons, the results of which bear such strong resemblance to symptoms of disease, that doctors are very frequently misled, and the verdict is ‘Death from natural causes.’ In dozens of cases every year the post-mortem proves disease, and thus the poisoner escapes.”
“What causes you to think this?” I inquired eagerly, recollections of the tragedy in Kensington vividly in my mind.
“Well,” he said, “I only make that allegation because every herbalist in London sells poisons in smaller or greater quantity. If he’s an unwise man, he asks no questions.—If he’s wise, he makes the usual inquiry.”