to
his wife. She quaffed enough to get the pellets down her resisting
throat, and handed the glass to him.

They remained staring at each other, trying to crowd into their eyes
an infinity of strange passionate messages, though their features were
all awry with nausea and the premonition of lethal pains.

Verrinder began to wonder at their delay. He was about to rise. Marie
Louise went to the door anxiously. Sir Joseph mumbled:

"Look once, my darlink. I find some bong-bongs. Vould you like, yes?"

With a childish canniness he held the bottle so that she could see the
skull and cross-bones and the word beneath.

Marie Louise, not realizing that they had already set out on the
adventure, gave a stifled cry and snatched at the bottle. It fell to
the floor with a crash, and the tablets leaped here and there like
tiny white beetles. Some of them ran out into the room and caught
Verrinder's eye.

Before he could reach the door Sir Joseph had said, triumphantly, to
Marie Louise:

"Mamma and I did eat already. Too bad you do not come vit. _Ade,
Toechterchen. Lebewohl!_"

He was reaching his awkward arms out to clasp her when Verrinder burst
into the homely scene of their tragedy. He caught up the broken bottle
and saw the word "_Poison_." Beneath were the directions, but no word
of description, no mention of the antidote.

"What is this stuff?" Verrinder demanded, in a frenzy of dread and
wrath and self-reproach.

"I don't know," Marie Louise stammered.

Verrinder repeated his demand of Sir Joseph.

"_Weiss nit_," he mumbled, beginning to stagger as the serpent struck
its fangs into his vitals.

Verrinder ran out into the hall and shouted down the stairs:

"Bickford, telephone for a doctor, in God's name--the nearest one.
Send out to the nearest chemist and fetch him on the run--with every
antidote he has. Send somebody down to the kitchen for warm water,
mustard, coffee."

There was a panic below, but Marie Louise knew nothing except the
swirling tempest of her own horror. Sir Joseph and Lady Webling, blind
with torment, wrung and wrenched with spasms of destruction, groped
for each other's hands and felt their way through clouds of fire to a
resting-place.

Marie Louise could give them no help, but a little guidance toward the
bed. They fell upon it--and after a hideous while they died.

CHAPTER VI

The physician arrived too late--physicians were hard to get for
civilians. While he was being