," he said earnestly; "you would please me very much if
you would do as I ask."

"There's the waiter!" she interrupted, "he has the brandy. Won't you
give it to him?"

It was the doctor who in the presence of the assembled visitors
dissolved a white pellet in the brandy before he forced the clenched
teeth apart and poured the liquor to the last drop down the man's
throat.

Jackson or Predeaux, to give him his real name, shuddered as he drank,
shuddered again a few seconds later and then went suddenly limp.

The doctor bent down and lifted his eyelid.

"I am afraid--he is dead," he said in a low voice.

"Dead!" the girl stared at him. "Oh no! Not dead!"

Van Heerden nodded.

"Heart failure," he said.

"The same kind of heart failure that killed John Millinborn," said a
voice behind him. "The cost of the Green Rust is totalling up, doctor."

The girl swung round. Mr. Beale was standing at her elbow, but his
steady eyes were fixed upon van Heerden.

CHAPTER IX

A CRIME AGAINST THE WORLD

"What do you mean?" asked Dr. van Heerden.

"I merely repeat the words of the dead man," answered Beale, "heart
failure!"

He picked up from the table the leather case which the doctor had taken
from his pocket. There were four little phials and one of these was
uncorked.

"Digitalis!" he read. "That shouldn't kill him, doctor."

He looked at van Heerden thoughtfully, then picked up the phial again.
It bore the label of a well-known firm of wholesale chemists, and the
seal had apparently been broken for the first time when van Heerden
opened the tiny bottle.

"You have sent for the police?" Beale asked the agitated manager.

"Oui, m'sieur--directly. They come now, I think."

He walked to the vestibule to meet three men in plain clothes who had
just come through the swing-doors. There was something about van
Heerden's attitude which struck Beale as strange. He was standing in the
exact spot he had stood when the detective had addressed him. It seemed
as if something rooted him to the spot. He did not move even when the
ambulance men were lifting the body nor when the police were taking
particulars of the circumstances of the death. And Beale, escorting the
shaken girl up the broad staircase to a room where she could rest and
recover, looked back over his shoulder and saw him still standing, his
head bent, his fingers smoothing his beard.

"It was dreadful, dreadful," said the girl with a shiver. "I have n