"Certainly," Eva answered, all her soul in her eyes. "But there was yet a further curious incident. A few days after you had taken that fatal draught from my hand, Madame, in sudden anger, discharged all three servants. Then, when they had gone, she had a small square hole about six inches wide cut in the wall of one of the rooms--a bathroom adjoining my bedroom--close down to the floor, and before it was fitted a sliding panel in the wainscoting. Afterwards she had a strong iron bar placed upon the door, and the whole re-painted and grained. Then, having furnished the place roughly as a living-room, there came secretly late one night the wretched poisoner Hartmann, _alias_ Professor Douglas Dawson, flying from the police for some previous offence, as I afterwards discovered. Some German police-agents had got wind of his whereabouts. He entered that room, and when he was inside Madame fetched an apparatus I had never seen before, a kind of punch, and with it placed a leaden seal upon the door. Fresh servants were at once engaged, and these were told that inside that room was a quantity of antique furniture belonging to a friend who had gone abroad. Meanwhile Madame herself supplied the fugitive with food, cooked and uncooked, drink and books, and for a fortnight or so he lived there in secret. I held him in loathing and in hatred, yet I dared not utter a word or even flee from that house of terror, knowing well that in such case I, too, would quickly fall a victim to the machinations of what seemed a widespread conspiracy. I was in possession of their secret, and might turn informer. That was the reason those half-dozen bottles of port wine had been so generously given to me by my ingenious employer. I dared scarcely to eat or drink, and often slipped out secretly and bought cooked meat and bread to satisfy my hunger. One day, when Madame had ventured up to London, I chanced to enter the bedroom I had previously occupied. The panel was cautiously pushed back, and the man within asked for something to drink. I answered that I only had some port, all the rest being locked up. `Then give me that,' he said. I hesitated, then in sudden desperation I went to the cupboard where the wine was and handed him an unopened bottle. He gave a grunt of satisfaction, and the panel closed. That wine, Frank," she added, a deathlike pallor on her cheeks, "was the same as that of which you partook. Madame had prepared it with her little syringe as she had done the Benedictine." She paused, placing her hand upon her panting breast.