“Ayupee, or, as it is variously called in the several islands of the Eastern Archipelago, Pohon-Upas, Antjar, and Ipo,” said Cleek, in reply.  “The deadly venom which the Malays use in poisoning the heads of their arrows.”

“What! that awful stuff!” said Mrs. Bawdrey, with a little shuddering cry.  “And someone in this house—­” Her voice broke.  She plucked at Cleek’s sleeve and looked up at him in an agony of entreaty.  “Who?” she implored.  “Who in this house could?  You said you would tell to-night—­you said you would.  Oh, who could have the heart?  Ah!  Who?  It is true, if you have not heard it, that once upon a time there was bad blood between Mr. Murdock and him—­that Mr. Murdock is a family connection; but even he, oh, even he—­Tell me—­tell me, Mr. Cleek!”

“Mrs. Bawdrey, I can’t just yet,” he made reply.  “In my heart I am as certain of it as though the criminal had confessed; but I am waiting for a sign, and, until that comes, absolute proof is not possible.  That it will come, and may, indeed, come at any moment now that it is quite dark, I am very certain.  When it does—­”

He stopped and threw up a warning hand.  As he spoke a queer thudding sound struck one dull note through the stillness of the house.  He stood, bent forward, listening, absolutely breathless; then, on the other side of the wall, there rippled and rolled a something that was like the sound of a struggle between two voiceless animals, and—­the sign that he awaited had come!

“Follow me—­quickly, as noiselessly as you can.  Let no one hear, let no one see!” he said in a breath of excitement.  Then he sprang cat-like to the door, whirled it open, scudded round the angle of the passage to the entrance of the room where the fraudulent collection was kept, and went in with the silent fleetness of a panther.  And a moment later, when Captain Travers and Mrs. Bawdrey swung in through the door and joined him, they came upon a horrifying sight.

For there, leaning against the open door of the case where the skeleton of the nine-fingered man hung, was Dollops, bleeding and faint, and with a score of tooth-marks on his neck and throat, and on the floor at his feet Cleek was kneeling on the writhing figure of a man, who bit and tore and snarled like a cornered wolf and fought with teeth and feet and hands alike in the wild effort to get free from the grip of destiny.  A locked handcuff clamped one wrist, and from it swung, at the end of the connecting chain, its unlocked mate; the marks of Dollops’ fists were on his lips and cheeks, and at the foot of the case, where the hanging skeleton doddered and shook to the vibration of the floor, lay a shattered phial of deep-blue glass.

“Got you, you hound!” said Cleek, through his teeth as he wrenched the man’s two wrists together and snapped the other handcuff into place.  “You beast of ingratitude—­you Judas!  Kissing and betraying like any other Iscariot!  And a dear old man like that!  Look here, Mrs. Bawdrey; look here Captain, Travers; what do you think of a little rat like this?”