"A very curious one," she responded, pale, yet now firm in her determination to tell us everything. "Their discovery caused me a good deal of thought, especially as the secret consultations with Mr. Blain became more frequent when, after a fortnight or so in London, we returned to The Hollies. One day, however, a further incident happened, which was, to say the least, extraordinary. While alone in Madame's bedroom the cook entered, asking for some coppers to pay for some small article which had been brought. She wanted sevenpence. I had only sixpence in my purse, but remembering that in the little cabinet where Madame kept her jewels I had seen a penny on the previous day I unlocked it and took it out. Strangely enough, this penny was wrapped up in paper. I took it in my hand and turned it over to assure myself that it was not any rare foreign coin, and was about to hand it to the cook when Madame herself came in. `What's that you have?' she cried, in an instant pale-faced in alarm. I told her that I had taken the penny from the cabinet, whereupon she betrayed the greatest apprehension, and snatched up a piece of paper in which she carefully re-wrapped it. Then, telling me on no account to again touch it or open it, she gave the cook a penny from her pocket and dismissed her. Almost next instant I felt an indescribable numbness in the hand that had held the forbidden coin. The fingers seemed paralysed, and I had a faint idea that I had felt a strange roughness about the face of the copper, as though it had been chipped. I complained to Madame of the curious feeling, whereupon she flew to her small travelling medicine-chest, which she always kept locked, and took therefrom a phial, from which she poured a few drops of a dark green liquid into a glass of water. `There,' she said, betraying quite undue alarm, I thought, `drink that. You'll be better very quickly.' I gulped it down. It tasted very bitter, but within a quarter of an hour I felt no further pain. My hand had in a few seconds commenced to swell, but the medicine at once arrested it. Until long afterwards it never occurred to me that upon that penny was one of those insidious but most deadly of poisons known to toxicologists, which, entering by an abrasion of the skin, would have quickly proved fatal had not my employer at once administered an antidote. Later, I succeeded in obtaining possession of that coin, and found upon it a series of almost infinitesimal steel points, a puncture or scratch from any one of which must result in death." I recollected how we had discovered that coin in her escritoire. We might congratulate ourselves that neither of us had held it in our hands without its wrappings.