She put the syringe among a
number of others on the mantel-piece.
'Your friend has been naughty, Mr. Wilson,' she said again with that
same pout: 'he has been taking more atropine.'
'Not really?' said Wilson.
'Let me alone, the whole of you,' answered Peters: 'I ain't a child.'
These were the last intelligible words he ever spoke. He died shortly
before 1 A.M. He had been poisoned by a powerful dose of atropine.
From that moment to the moment when the _Boreal_ bore me down the
Thames, all the world was a mere tumbling nightmare to me, of which
hardly any detail remains in my memory. Only I remember the inquest, and
how I was called upon to prove that Peters had himself injected himself
with atropine. This was corroborated by Wilson, and by Clodagh: and the
verdict was in accordance.
And in all that chaotic hurry of preparation, three other things only,
but those with clear distinctness now, I remember.
The first--and chief--is that tempest of words which I heard at
Kensington from that big-mouthed Mackay on the Sunday night.
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