tea at five and of course dropped it. I was on watch
again. He reeled up to me on deck pale as death. I had been expecting
it; and yet I could hardly speak. "Go and tell the captain quietly," I
managed to say. He ran off muttering "My God! My God!" and I'm hanged
if he didn't get hysterical while trying to tell the captain, and start
screaming in the saloon, "Fully dressed! Dead! Fully dressed!" Mrs.
Anthony ran out of course but she didn't get hysterical. Franklin, who
was there too, told me that she hid her face on the captain's breast and
then he went out and left them there. It was days before Mrs. Anthony
was seen on deck. The first time I spoke to her she gave me her hand and
said, "My poor father was quite fond of you, Mr. Powell." She started
wiping her eyes and I fled to the other side of the deck. One would like
to forget all this had ever come near her."

But clearly he could not, because after lighting his pipe he began musing
aloud: "Very strong stuff it must have been. I wonder where he got it.
It could hardly be at a common chemist. Well, he had it from somewhere--a
mere pinch it must have been, no more."

"I have my theory," observed Marlow, "which to a certain extent does away
with the added horror of a coldly premeditated crime. Chance had stepped
in there too. It was not Mr. Smith who obtained the poison. It was the
Great de Barral. And it was not meant for the obscure, magnanimous
conqueror of Flora de Barral; it was meant for the notorious financier
whose enterprises had nothing to do with magnanimity. He had his
physician in his days of greatness. I even seem to remember that the man
was called at the trial on some small point or other. I can imagine that
de Barral went to him when he saw, as he could hardly help seeing, the
possibility of a "triumph of envious rivals"--a heavy sentence.

I doubt if for love or even for money, but I think possibly, from pity
that man provided him with what Mr. Powell called "strong stuff." From
what Powell saw of the very act I am fairly certain it must have been
contained in a capsule and that he had it about him on the last day of
his trial, perhaps secured by a stitch in his waistcoat pocket. He
didn't use it. Why? Did he think of his child at the last moment? Was
it want of courage? We can't tell. But he found it in his clothes when
he came out of jail. It had escaped investigation if there was any.
Chance had armed him. And cha