Feng showed me the note. It was upon half a sheet of the hotel note-paper, but written in an unfamiliar and rather uneducated hand.
“I never wrote that!” I protested, feeling now quite better, after I had swallowed a glass of milk. “And I certainly did not take any poison.”
“I knew it was not in your handwriting!” Feng said, quietly. “As soon as Mrs. Audley telegraphed to me I at once met her and we came on here together. But, tell me, how did it come about that you swallowed that stuff? It hasn’t been analyzed yet, so Doctor Denbury is not quite certain what it is. He, however, has made a guess, because of its smell. But apparently you were drugged also. Tell me exactly what you recollect about it. I want to know everything, Yelverton.”
I tried to compose myself and reflect.
Presently, while he and Thelma sat side by side, I told them pretty much as I have written here, exactly what had happened since my arrival at the Cross Keys.
Feng listened very attentively without uttering a word. Now and then he grunted, but whether owing to uncertainty or satisfaction I could gain no idea. His attitude puzzled me sorely. I could not reconcile his secret friendship with Thelma, with his pretended hostility. Even now, in spite of the care he was taking of me, I wondered whether he was my friend, and in summing up all the past circumstances I came to the conclusion that he was not to be trusted.
The effort of thinking out all this proved too much for me, weakened as I was by the poison—whatever it was—and, again feeling drowsy, I once more closed my eyes, and slept.
I was conscious of a prick in my arm, and I know now that Doctor Denbury gave me an injection.
Not until noon on the following day was I able to get up and dress, and then, accompanied by Feng and Thelma, I managed to walk round to the Cross Keys which was only a short distance from the hospital.
The brisk, bald-headed manager invited me into his private room and with many inquiries about my health and expression of amazement, asked me to relate what had actually happened. But what could I tell him? I did not myself know.