They came forward at his word, and, looking down, saw that the figure he was bending over was the figure of Philip Bawdrey.

“Oh!” gulped Mrs. Bawdrey, and then shut her two hands over her eyes and fell away weak and shivering.  “Oh, Mr. Cleek, it can’t be—­it can’t!  To do a thing like that?”

“Oh, he’d have done worse, the little reptile, if he hadn’t been pulled up short,” said Cleek in reply.  “He’d have hanged you for it, if it had gone the way he planned.  You look in your boxes; you, too, Captain Travers.  I’ll wager each of you finds a phial of Ayupee hidden among them somewhere.  Came in to put more of the cursed stuff on the ninth finger of the skeleton, so that it would be ready for the next time, didn’t he, Dollops?”

“Yes, Gov’nor.  I waited for him behind the case just as you told me to, sir, and when he ups and slips the finger of the skilligan into the neck of the bottle, I nips out and whacks the bracelet on him.  But he was too quick for me, sir, so I only got one on; and then, the hound, he turns on me like a blessed hyena, sir, and begins a-chawin’ of me windpipe.  I say, Gov’nor, take off his silver wristlets, will you, sir, and lemme have jist ten minutes with him on my own?  Five for me, sir, and five for his poor old dad!”

“Not I,” said Cleek.  “I wouldn’t let you soil those honest lands of yours on his vile little body, Dollops.  Thought you had a noodle to deal with, didn’t you, Mr. Philip Bawdrey?  Thought you could lead me by the nose, and push me into finding those phials just where you wanted them found, didn’t you?  Well, you’ve got a few more thoughts coming.  Look here, Captain Travers:  what do you think of this fellow’s little game?  Tried to take me in about you and Mrs. Bawdrey being lovers, and trying to do away with him and his father to get the old man’s money.”

“Why, the contemptible little hound!  Bless my soul, man, I’m engaged to Mrs. Bawdrey’s cousin.  And as for his stepmother—­why, she threw the little worm over as soon as he began making love to her, and tried to make her take up with him by telling her how much he’d be worth when his father died.”

“I guessed as much.  I didn’t fancy him from the first moment; and he was so blessed eager to have me begin by suspecting you two, that I smelt a rat at once.  Oh, but he’s been crafty enough in other things.  Putting that devilish stuff on the ninth finger of the skeleton, and never losing an opportunity to get his poor old father to handle it and show it to people.  It’s a strong, irritant poison—­sap of the upas-tree is the base of it—­producing first an irritation of the skin, then a blister, and, when that broke, communicating the poison directly to the blood every time the skeleton hand touched it.  A weak solution at first, so that the decline would be natural, the growth of the malady gradual.  But if I’d found that phial in your room last night, as he hoped and believed I had done—­well, look for yourself.  The finger of the skeleton is thick with the beastly, gummy stuff to-night.  Double strength, of course.  The next time his father touched it he’d have died before morning.  And the old chap fairly worshipping him.  I suspected him, and suspected what the stuff that was being used really was from the beginning.  Last night I drugged him, and then—­I knew.”