Page 132 (2/2)

"Ipecac That quack dosed her with ipecac--and recently! Can you srimaced with distaste, but took a cautious sniff, and nodded

"Would that not be a proper thing to do, when you’ve a person wi’ a curdled waave wee Beckie MacLeod ipecacuanha yourself, when she’d drunk your blue stuff"

"True enough" Five-year-old Beckie had drunk half a bottle of the arsenic decoction I made to poison rats, attracted by the pale blue color, and evidently not at all put off by the taste Well, the rats liked it, too "But I did that right away There’s no point in giving it hours afterward, when the poison or irritant has already passed out of the stoh, would he have known that? He ain because he could think of nothing else to do I frowned, turning back the heavy wall of the stoe; the inner as raw-looking, dark red as ground meat There was a sun to separate fro that it was maybe the ipecac that killed her?"

"I wasbut now I’ carefully It had occurred to iven Betty a heavy dose of ipecac, the violent voht have caused an internal rupture and he any evidence of that I used the scalpel to slit the sto the duodenum

"Can you hand me one of the s the lantern on the nail and obligingly knelt to ruh the stoe in the furrows of the rugae I scraped gingerly at it, finding that it caertips I wasn’t sure what it was, but a suspicion was growing unpleasantly in the back of my mind I meant to flush the stomach, collect the residue, and take it back to the house, where I could exa If it hat I thought--

Without warning, the door of the shed swung open A whoosh of cold air ht--bright enough to show me Phillip Wylie’s face, pale and shocked in the frahtly open, then closed it and sed; I heard the sound of it clearly His eyes traveled slowly over the scene, then returned to my face, wide pools of horror

I was shocked, too My heart had leapt into

What would happen if he caused an outcry? It would be the most dreadful scandal, whether I was able to explain what I was doing, or not If not--fear rippled overburned for witchcraft once before; and that was one tiht movement of the air near my feet, and realized that Jaht of the lantern was bright, but limited; I stood in a pool of darkness that reached to ed hinal to stay put

I forced hwildly I sed hard and said the first thing that ca"

He licked his lips He earing neither patch nor powder at the moment, but was quite as pale as the ain "I--er--what are you doing?"

I should have thought that was reasonably obvious; presu it--and I had no intention of going into those

"Never youa bit of nerve "What are you doing, skulking round the place at dead of night?"

Evidently that was a good question; his face shifted at once froh to turn and look over his shoulder He stopped the motion before it was completed, butin the darkness behind hi pale in the glow of the lantern, sardonic eyes the green of gooseberries Stephen Bonnet

"Jesus H Roosevelt Christ," I said

A nus happened at that point: Ja cobra, Phillip Wylie leaped back from the door with a startled cry, and the lantern crashed fro smell of splattered oil and brandy, a soft whoosh like a furnace lighting, and the cruone; there were shouts fro feet on brick I kicked at the burning fabric, ht better, and instead lunged against the table, knocking it over and du shroud with one hand and dragged it over corpse and upturned table The floor of the shed was thick with sawdust, already burning in spots I kicked the shattered lantern hard, knocking it into the dry boards of the wall, and spilling out the rest of its oil, which ignited at once

There were shouts froet out I seized ht, ht about the evidence It was the one point of certainty in the prevailing chaos I had no notion as going on, or what ht Betty had indeed been itated servants in the kitchen garden, apparently wakened by the disturbance They were casting round in a haphazard ht but that of the fading moon, it was an easy matter to keep to the shadows and slip past them

No one had cooing to attract attention soon I crouched against the wall, in the shadows of a huge raspberry cane, as the gate flung open and two h fro about the horses The sht the stable was on fire, or about to be

My heart was pounding so hard against the inside of my chest that I could feel it, like a fist I had an unpleasant vision of the flaccid heart I had just held in my hand, and of what my ownand thu s