"I will not have it!"
"I can go elsewhere," he replied coldly.
"You would leave me?"
"The moment you cross my will," emphatically.
It became her turn to pace. Torn between her love of the man and the danger which stared her in the face, she was for the time being distracted. All the time he watched her with malevolent curiosity, knowing that in the end she would concur with his evil plans.
"Very well," she said finally. "But listen; we shall be found out.
Never doubt that. Your revenge will cost us both our lives. I feel it."
"Bah! The law will have no hand in my end. I always carry a pellet; and that ring of yours would suffice a regiment. She will not die.
She will merely become a kind of paralytic; the kind that can move a little but not enough; always wheeled about in a chair. I"ll bring in the peaches; rosy and downy. One bite, after a given time, will do the trick. If they suspect and throw them out we have lost nothing but the peaches. A trusted messenger will carry them to the Hargreave house.
And then we"ll sit down and wait."
Meantime, in the library of the Hargreave house, Florence and Jim were puzzling over the blank sheet of paper.
"I"ll wager," said Jim, "the water washed all the writing away. The fire does not seem to do any good. We"ll turn it over to Jones.
Jones"ll find a way to solve it. Trust him."
"What are you two chattering about?" asked Susan, who was arranging some flowers on the table.
"Secrets," said Jim, smiling.
"Humph!"
Susan puttered about for a few minutes longer, then crossed to the reception room, intending to go up-stairs. At that moment the maid was admitting a messenger with a basket of fruit.
"For Miss Hargreave," said he. He gave the basket to the maid, touched his cap awkwardly, and swung on his heel, closing the door behind him.
He was in a hurry to deliver another message.
"Oh, what lovely fruit!" cried Susan, pausing. "I"m going to steal one," she laughed. She selected a peach and began eating it on the way up to her room.
The maid pa.s.sed on into the library.
"What"s this?" inquired Florence, as the maid held out the basket. She selected a peach and was about to set her white teeth into it when Jim interposed.
"Wait a moment, dear." Florence lowered the peach. Jim turned to the maid. "Who sent it?"
"I don"t know, sir. A messenger brought it, saying it was for Miss Hargreave."
"Let me see if there is a card." But Jim searched in vain for the card of the donor. All at once his suspicions arose. "Don"t touch them.
Better let the maid throw them out. Fruit from unknown persons might not be the healthiest thing in the world."
"What do you think?"
"That in all probability they are poisoned. But there"s no need trying to prove my theory right or wrong. Ask Jones. He"ll tell you to throw them away."
"Horrible!" Florence shuddered. "But they do not want to poison me.
I"m too valuable. They want me alive."
"Who can say?" returned Jim gloomily. "They may have learned that they can not beat us, no matter what card they turn up. I may be wrong, but take my advice and throw them away.... Good lord, what"s that?"
startled.
"Some one cried!"
"Oh, Miss Florence!" exclaimed the maid, terror-stricken as she recalled Susan"s act. "Miss Susan took a peach from the basket and was eating it on the way to her room!"
"Good heavens!" gasped Jim. "I was right. The fruit was poisoned."
Jim had heard enough to send for a specialist he knew. The specialist arrived about twenty minutes after Susan"s first cry. To his keen eye it looked like a certain poison which had for its basis the venom of the cobra.
"Will she live?"
"Oh, yes. But she"ll be a wreck for some months. Send her to the hospital where I can visit her frequently. And I"ll take that peach along for a.n.a.lysis. No police affair?"
"No. We dare not call them in," said Jim.
"That"s your affair. I"ll send down the ambulance. Keep her quiet.
She"ll have a species of paralysis; but that"ll work off under treatment. A strange business."
"So it is," agreed Jim grimly.
Florence knelt beside her friend"s bed and cried softly.
"You called me just in time. An hour later, nothing would have saved her. She would have been paralyzed for life."
Jim accompanied the doctor to the door and went in search of Jones. He found the taciturn butler eying the fruit basket, his face gray and drawn, though his eyes blazed with fury.
"Poison!"
"A pretty bad poison, too," said Jim. "We can"t do anything. We"ve just got to sit still. But in the end we"ll get them. That she devil...."
"No, my friend; that he devil. The woman is mad over him and would commit any crime at his bidding. But this is his work. We want him.
He wasn"t without courage to send this fruit, knowing that I would instantly suspect the sender. Yet, I have no definite proof. I could not hold him in court in law. He will have bought the fruit piece by piece, the basket in a basket shop. He will have injected the poison himself when alone. Poor Susan! That messenger was without doubt some one over whom he holds the threat of the death chair. That"s the way he works."
Jim tramped the room while Jones carried the fruit to the kitchen. The butler returned after a while.
"What about that blank sheet of paper?"
"It has to be dipped into a solution; after that you can read it by heating. I have already dipped it into the solution. The moment the heat leaves the sheet the writing disappears again. The ink is waterproof. I"ll show you."
Jones got a candle from the mantel, lit it, and held the sheet of paper very close to the flame. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, letters began to form on the blank sheet. At length the message was complete.
"Dear Hargreave--The Russian minister of police is at the Blank Hotel under the name of Henri Servan. He is investigating the work of the Black Hundred in this country and can free you from their vengeance if you supply the evidence needed."