Chapter Eleven.
Contains some Strange News.
My heart seemed to stop beating. Old Taylor, then, was dead, and I sat up in bed, staring straight before me.
For nearly a minute I did not speak. All the time I felt John’s calm gaze, puzzled, inquisitive, fixed upon me. I had gone through enough unhappiness during these past weeks to last me a lifetime, but all that I had endured would be as nothing by comparison with this. I could not blind myself to one fact—I had poisoned old Taylor deliberately. Had I, by some hideous miscalculation, the result of ignorance, overdosed him, and brought his poor old life to a premature end? I might be charged with manslaughter. Or worse!
Why! I might be convicted of murder. I might even be hanged! The grim thought held me breathless.
And Vera—my thoughts fled to her at once—what would become of Vera? Even if I were only imprisoned, and only for a short spell, Vera would have none to look to for help, none to defend her. She would be at the mercy of her persecutors! I think that thought appalled me even more than the thought that I might be tried for manslaughter or murder.
“Oh,” I said at last to John, “it’s some mistake. The police have made some grotesque blunder. You had better show them up, and I will talk to them.”
No blunder had been made, and I knew it.
I must say that I was surprised at the officers’ extreme courtesy. Seeing they were about to arrest me on suspicion of having caused a man’s death, their politeness, their consideration for my feelings, had a touch of irony.