tchington drew
him aside.

"Coates says there's no doubt about it!" he whispered. "Poisoned!
Hydrocyanic acid!"

CHAPTER XIII. BRYCE IS ASKED A QUESTION

Mitchington stepped aside into a private room, motioning Bryce to follow
him. He carefully closed the door, and looking significantly at his
companion, repeated his last words, with a shake of the head.

"Poisoned!--without the very least doubt," he whispered. "Hydrocyanic
acid--which, I understand, is the same thing as what's commonly called
prussic acid. They say then hadn't the least difficulty in finding that
out! so there you are."

"That's what Coates has told you, of course?" asked Bryce. "After the
autopsy?"

"Both of 'em told me--Coates, and Everest, who helped him," replied
Mitchington. "They said it was obvious from the very start. And--I say!"

"Well?" said Bryce.

"It wasn't in that tin bottle, anyway," remarked Mitchington, who was
evidently greatly weighted with mystery.

"No!--of course it wasn't!" affirmed Bryce. "Good Heavens, man--I know
that!"

"How do you know?" asked Mitchington.

"Because I poured a few drops from that bottle into my hand when I first
found Collishaw and tasted the stuff," answered Bryce readily. "Cold
tea! with too much sugar in it. There was no H.C.N. in that besides,
wherever it is, there's always a smell stronger or fainter--of bitter
almonds. There was none about that bottle."

"Yet you were very anxious that we should take care of the bottle?"
observed Mitchington.

"Of course!--because I suspected the use of some much rarer poison
than that," retorted Bryce. "Pooh!--it's a clumsy way of poisoning
anybody!--quick though it is."

"Well, there's where it is!" said Mitchington. "That'll be the medical
evidence at the inquest, anyway. That's how it was done. And the
question now is--"

"Who did it?" interrupted Bryce. "Precisely! Well--I'll say this much
at once, Mitchington. Whoever did it was either a big bungler--or damned
clever! That's what I say!"

"I don't understand you," said Mitchington.

"Plain enough--my meaning," replied Bryce, smiling. "To finish anybody
with that stuff is easy enough--but no poison is more easily detected.
It's an amateurish way of poisoning anybody--unless you can do it in
such a fashion that no suspicion can attach you to. And in this case
it's here--whoever administered that poison to Collishaw must have been
certain--absolutely certain, mind you!--that it was i