“You were quite right, Fisher, when you said that young fellow was in danger of going down dark ways toward the pit.  Whether or no, as you fancied, the jolt you gave to his view of the general had anything to do with it, he has not been treating the general well for some time.  It’s an unpleasant business, and I don’t want to dwell on it; but it’s pretty plain that his wife was not treating him well, either.  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.”

“Yes,” remarked Fisher, “and what about the bottomless well?”

“What has the bottomless well got to do with it?” asked his friend.

“It has nothing to do with it,” replied Fisher.  “That is what I find utterly confounding and incredible.”

“And why should that particular hole in the ground have anything to do with it?”

“It is a particular hole in your case,” said Fisher.  “But I won’t insist on that just now.  By the way, there is another thing I ought to tell you.  I said I sent Boyle away in charge of Travers.  It would be just as true to say I sent Travers in charge of Boyle.”

“You don’t mean to say you suspect Tom Travers?” cried the other.

“He was a deal bitterer against the general than Boyle ever was,” observed Horne Fisher, with a curious indifference.

“Man, you’re not saying what you mean,” cried Grayne.  “I tell you I found the poison in one of the coffee cups.”

“There was always Said, of course,” added Fisher, “either for hatred or hire.  We agreed he was capable of almost anything.”

“And we agreed he was incapable of hurting his master,” retorted Grayne.

“Well, well,” said Fisher, amiably, “I dare say you are right; but I should just like to have a look at the library and the coffee cups.”