"You--you're not going to make away with yourself before my eyes? You--you don't suppose I'll let you do it?" "How would you propose to stop me?" Again Mr. Patterson mopped his brow with his silk handkerchief of many colours. He presented a pitiable spectacle. His lips twitched, his hand trembled, and his whole huge frame seemed to shiver like a mass of jelly. His voice was broken and husky, he stammered in his speech. "Elmore, you--you're quite right; I'm--I'm not very well. I--I've had a great deal to put up with lately, and it's unhinged me. Give me that infernal thing you've got there--I don't know what is in it, or if you're playing a trick with me, but--you give it me." "I'm going to--shortly." The young man's airy self-possession was in almost painful contrast to the elder's agitation. He glanced at his watch, holding the slender, round case between the finger and thumb of his other hand. "Nearly half-past nine. What was that station we passed? Was it Hayward's Heath? I fancy we do stop at Croydon, so that there's not much time to spare. I'm going to act on your suggestion, uncle--with a difference. I am not going to commit suicide, but you are!" "I am?--you young fool!--what do you mean?" "In fact, you practically have committed suicide already." "The man's mad." "Possibly--but not on this particular point. When you told me in such very coarse language what I might expect, you practically committed suicide, as--I'm about to prove. You remember the case of the eminent financier who, within five minutes of being sentenced to a long term of penal servitude, was in a room which was immediately outside the court in which he had received his sentence, from which he was instantly to be haled to gaol, under the very noses of his warders slipped something between his lips and--escaped. You will probably remember the case better than I do, since at the time I was only a boy; yet I have studied it to such purpose that within this pretty little box are--shall we call them tabloids?--which are in all essentials identical with the one he swallowed. They kill as by a flash of lightning. Whoever has one of these within his reach no man shall stay him from--escaping. You are going to swallow one of these tabloids, uncle--this one." Unscrewing the top of his silver box, Rodney removed the cap, and took from it what looked like a small peppermint lozenge, holding it up between his finger and thumb. "You see, uncle--this one; as it were, death reduced to its lowest possible denomination."