“I suppose they have given him about fifteen pounds in Haiphong for that little lot.”

“Mr. Burns!” I cried.

He nodded grotesquely over his raised legs, like two broomsticks in the pyjamas, with enormous bare feet at the end.

“Why not?  The stuff is pretty expensive in this part of the world, and they were very short of it in Tonkin.  And what did he care?  You have not known him.  I have, and I have defied him.  He feared neither God, nor devil, nor man, nor wind, nor sea, nor his own conscience.  And I believe he hated everybody and everything.  But I think he was afraid to die.  I believe I am the only man who ever stood up to him.  I faced him in that cabin where you live now, when he was sick, and I cowed him then.  He thought I was going to twist his neck for him.  If he had had his way we would have been beating up against the Nord-East monsoon, as long as he lived and afterward, too, for ages and ages.  Acting the Flying Dutchman in the China Sea!  Ha!  Ha!”

“But why should he replace the bottles like this?” . . .  I began.

“Why shouldn’t he?  Why should he want to throw the bottles away?  They fit the drawer.  They belong to the medicine chest.”

“And they were wrapped up,” I cried.

“Well, the wrappers were there.  Did it from habit, I suppose, and as to refilling, there is always a lot of stuff they send in paper parcels that burst after a time.  And then, who can tell?  I suppose you didn’t taste it, sir?  But, of course, you are sure. . . .”

“No,” I said.  “I didn’t taste it.  It is all overboard now.”

Behind me, a soft, cultivated voice said:  “I have tasted it.  It seemed a mixture of all sorts, sweetish, saltish, very horrible.”

Ransome, stepping out of the pantry, had been listening for some time, as it was very excusable in him to do.

“A dirty trick,” said Mr. Burns.  “I always said he would.”

The magnitude of my indignation was unbounded.  And the kind, sympathetic doctor, too.  The only sympathetic man I ever knew . . . instead of writing that warning letter, the very refinement of sympathy, why didn’t the man make a proper inspection?  But, as a matter of fact, it was hardly fair to blame the doctor.  The fittings were in order and the medicine chest is an officially arranged affair.  There was nothing really to arouse the slightest suspicion.  The person I could never forgive was myself.  Nothing should ever be taken for granted.  The seed of everlasting remorse was sown in my breast.

“I feel it’s all my fault,” I exclaimed, “mine and nobody else’s.  That’s how I feel.  I shall never forgive myself.”

“That’s very foolish, sir,” said Mr. Burns fiercely.