I don't know how far it went, but it went as far
as concealment, anyhow; for when Lady Hastings spoke to Boyle it was
to tell him she had hidden a note in the Budge book in the library.
The general overheard, or came somehow to know, and he went straight
to the book and found it. He confronted Boyle with it, and they had
a scene, of course. And Boyle was confronted with something else; he
was confronted with an awful alternative, in which the life of one
old man meant ruin and his death meant triumph and even happiness."
"Well," observed Fisher, at last, "I don't blame him for not telling
you the woman's part of the story. But how do you know about the
letter?"
"I found it on the general's body," answered Grayne, "but I found
worse things than that. The body had stiffened in the way rather
peculiar to poisons of a certain Asiatic sort. Then I examined the
coffee cups, and I knew enough chemistry to find poison in the dregs
of one of them. Now, the General went straight to the bookcase,
leaving his cup of coffee on the bookstand in the middle of the
room. While his back was turned, and Boyle was pretending to examine
the bookstand, he was left alone with the coffee cup. The poison
takes about ten minutes to act, and ten minutes' walk would bring
them to the bottomless well.
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