The Voice in the Fog

A large diamond brooch, a string of fine pearls, and a bag of wonderful

polished emeralds.

"Mort, the man couldn't help it. Why, here's a fortune for a prince;

and yet he remained here for more. Well, he's gone; poor beggar."

They burrowed into the suit-cases and trunks. A dark green bottle came

to light, Forbes took out the cork and carelessly sniffed. A great

black wave of dizziness swept over him, and he would have fallen but

for Crawford. The bottle fell. Crawford put Forbes out into the hall

and ran back for the bottle, sensing a slight dizziness himself. He

recognized the odor. It was Persian. He and Mason had run across it

unpleasantly, once upon a time, in Teheran. He was not familiar with

the chemistry of the concoction. He corked the bottle tightly. Forbes

came in groggily.

"Well! Did you ever see such an ass, Crawford? To open a strange

bottle like that and sniff at it!"

"Here's an atomizer. They must have used that. Never touched their

victims."

"It evaporates quickly, though. But the effect on a sleeping person

would be long. Now, who the deuce is this chap Webb? A confederate?"

"Still dizzy, eh? No; Thomas is a dupe. Don't you get it? He's Lord

Monckton. Come on; we'll go down and straighten out the kinks."

So they went down-stairs. And Forbes tells me that when Thomas

acknowledged his identity, Kitty did not fall on his neck. Instead,

she walked up to him, burning with fury: so pretty that Forbes almost

fell in love with her, then and there.

"So! You pretended to be poor, and entered my home to make play behind

our backs! Despicable! We took you in without question, generously,

kindly, and treated you as one of us; and all the while you were

laughing in your sleeve!"

"Kitty!" remonstrated Killigrew, who felt twenty years gone from his

shoulders.

"Let me be! I wish him to know exactly what I think of his conduct."

She whirled upon the luckless erstwhile haberdasher's clerk; but he

held out his hand for silence. He was angry, too.

"Miss Killigrew, I entered your employ honestly. I was poor. I am

poor. I have had to work for my bread every day of my life. For seven

years I was a clerk in a haberdasher's shop in London. And one day the

solicitors came and notified me that I had fallen into the title, two

hundred and twenty pounds, and those sapphires. The estate was so

small and so heavily mortgaged that I knew I could not live on it. The

rents merely paid the interest. I was no better off than before. The

cash was all that was saved out of an annuity." From his inner

waistcoat pocket he produced a document and dropped it on the desk.

"There is the solicitor's statement, relative to the whole transaction.

And now I'll tell you the rest of it. I've been a fool. I was always

more or less alone. I met this man Cavenaugh, or whatever he calls

himself, in a concert-hall about a year ago. We became friendly. He

came to me and bought his collars and ties and suspenders."