t you to get into the habit at once of letting me
have my little way----'

Now she touched my hair with a lofty playfulness that soothed me: but
even then I looked upon the rumpled bed, and saw that the man there was
really very sick.

I have still a nausea to write about it! Lucrezia Borgia in her own age
may have been heroic: but Lucrezia in this late century! One could retch
up the heart...

The man grew sick on that bed, I say. The second week passed, and only
ten days remained before the start of the expedition.

At the end of that second week, Wilson, the electrician, was one evening
sitting by Peter's bedside when I entered.

At the moment, Clodagh was about to administer a dose to Peters; but
seeing me, she put down the medicine-glass on the night table, and came
toward me; and as she came, I saw a sight which stabbed me: for Wilson
took up the deposited medicine-glass, elevated it, looked at it,
smelled into it: and he did it with a kind of hurried, light-fingered
stealth; and he did it with an under-look, and a meaningness of
expression which, I thought, proved mistrust....

Meantime, Clark came each day. He had himself a medical degree, and
about this time I called him in professionally, together with Alleyne of
Cavendish Square, to consultation over Peters. The patient lay in a
semi-coma broken by passionate vomitings, and his condition puzzled us
all. I formally stated that he took atropine--had been originally
poisoned by atropine: but we saw that his present symptoms were not
atropine symptoms, but, it almost seemed, of some other vegetable
poison, which we could not precisely name.

'Mysterious thing,' said Clark to me, when we were alone.

'_I_ don't understand it,' I said.

'Who are the two nurses?'

'Oh, highly recommended people of my own.'

'At any rate, my dream about you comes true, Jeffson. It is clear that
Peters is out of the running now.'

I shrugged.

'I now formally invite you to join the expedition,' said Clark: 'do you
consent?'

I shrugged again.

'Well, if that means consent,' he said, 'let me remind you that you have
only eight days, and all the world to do in them.'

This conversation occurred in the dining-room of Peters' house: and as
we passed through the door, I saw Clodagh gliding down the passage
outside--rapidly--away from us.

Not a word I said to her that day about Clark's invitation. Yet I asked
myself repeatedly: Did she not know of it? Had she not _li