The Cup of Fury Part 8

"To the--the Tower of London?"

"The car is ready."

Marie Louise was stabbed with fright. She seized the doomed twain in a faster embrace.

"What are you going to do with these poor souls?"

"Their souls my dear Miss Webling, are outside our jurisdiction."

"With their poor bodies, then?"

"I am not a judge or a jury, Miss Webling. Everything will be done with propriety. They will not be torpedoed in midocean without warning. They will have the full advantage of the British law to the last."

That awful word jarred them all. But Sir Joseph was determined to make a good end. He drew himself up with another effort.

"Excuse, plea.s.s, Mr. Verrinder--might it be we should take with us a few little things?"

"Of course."

"Thang gyou." He bowed and turned to go, taking his wife and Marie Louise by the arm, for mutual support.

"If you don't mind, I'll come along," said Mr. Verrinder.

Sir Joseph nodded. The three went heavily up the grandiose stairway as if a gibbet waited at the top. They went into Sir Joseph's room, which adjoined that of his wife. Mr. Verrinder paused on the sill somewhat shyly:

"This is a most unpleasant task, but--"

Marie Louise hesitated, smiling gruesomely.

"My room is across the hall. You can hardly be in both places at once, can you?"

"I fancy I can trust you--especially as the house is surrounded. If you don't mind joining us later."

Marie Louise went to her room. Her maid was there in a palsy of fear.

The servants had not dared apply themselves to the keyholes, but they knew that the master was visited by the police and that a cordon was drawn about the house.

The ashen girl offered her help to Marie Louise, wondering if she would compromise herself with the law, but incapable of deserting so good a mistress even at such a crisis. Marie Louise thanked her and told her to go to bed, compelled her to leave. Then she set about the dreary task of selecting a few necessaries--a nightgown, an extra day gown, some linen, some silver, and a few brushes. She felt as if she were laying out her own grave-clothes, and that she would need little and not need that little long.

She threw a good-by look, a long, sweeping, caressing glance, about her castle, and went across the hall, lugging her hand-bag. Before she entered Sir Joseph's room she knocked.

It was Mr. Verrinder that answered, "Come in."

He was seated in a chair, dejected and making himself as inoffensive as possible. Lady Webling had packed her own bag and was helping the helpless Sir Joseph find the things he was looking for in vain, though they were right before him. Marie Louise saw evidences that a larger packing had already been done. Verrinder had surprised them, about to flee.

Sir Joseph was ready at last. He was closing his bag when he took a last glance, and said:

"My toot'-brush and powder."

He went to his bathroom cabinet, and there he saw in the little apothecary-shop a bottle of tablets prescribed for him during his illness. It was conspicuously labeled "_Poison_."

He stood staring at the bottle so long in such fascination that Lady Webling came to the door to say:

"Vat is it you could not find now, papa?"

She leaned against the edge of the cas.e.m.e.nt, and he pointed to the bottle. Their eyes met, and in one long look they pa.s.sed through a brief Gethsemane. No words were exchanged. She nodded. He took the bottle from the shelf stealthily, unscrewed the top, poured out a heap of tablets and gave them to her, then poured another heap into his fat palm.

"_Prosit_!" he said, and they flung the venom into their throats. It was brackish merely from the coating, but they could not swallow all the pellets. He filled a gla.s.s of water at the faucet and handed it to his wife. She quaffed enough to get the pellets down her resisting throat, and handed the gla.s.s to him.

They remained staring at each other, trying to crowd into their eyes an infinity of strange pa.s.sionate messages, though their features were all awry with nausea and the premonition of lethal pains.

Verrinder began to wonder at their delay. He was about to rise. Marie Louise went to the door anxiously. Sir Joseph mumbled:

"Look once, my darlink. I find some bong-bongs. Vould you like, yes?"

With a childish canniness he held the bottle so that she could see the skull and cross-bones and the word beneath.

Marie Louise, not realizing that they had already set out on the adventure, gave a stifled cry and s.n.a.t.c.hed at the bottle. It fell to the floor with a crash, and the tablets leaped here and there like tiny white beetles. Some of them ran out into the room and caught Verrinder's eye.

Before he could reach the door Sir Joseph had said, triumphantly, to Marie Louise:

"Mamma and I did eat already. Too bad you do not come vit. _Ade, Tochterchen. Lebewohl!_"

He was reaching his awkward arms out to clasp her when Verrinder burst into the homely scene of their tragedy. He caught up the broken bottle and saw the word "_Poison_." Beneath were the directions, but no word of description, no mention of the antidote.

"What is this stuff?" Verrinder demanded, in a frenzy of dread and wrath and self-reproach.

"I don't know," Marie Louise stammered.

Verrinder repeated his demand of Sir Joseph.

"_Weiss nit_," he mumbled, beginning to stagger as the serpent struck its fangs into his vitals.

Verrinder ran out into the hall and shouted down the stairs:

"Bickford, telephone for a doctor, in G.o.d's name--the nearest one.

Send out to the nearest chemist and fetch him on the run--with every antidote he has. Send somebody down to the kitchen for warm water, mustard, coffee."

There was a panic below, but Marie Louise knew nothing except the swirling tempest of her own horror. Sir Joseph and Lady Webling, blind with torment, wrung and wrenched with spasms of destruction, groped for each other's hands and felt their way through clouds of fire to a resting-place.

Marie Louise could give them no help, but a little guidance toward the bed. They fell upon it--and after a hideous while they died.

CHAPTER VI

The physician arrived too late--physicians were hard to get for civilians. While he was being hunted down and brought in, Verrinder fought an unknown poison with what antidotes he could improvise, and saw that they merely added annoyance to agony.