"May I have a word or two with you first, sir?" said Wade, lowering his voice to a whisper and sending an uneasy glance over his shoulder. "Come this way, sir. It's safer over here. Uncommonly sharp ears he has, sir." "Well, what is it? I must not be delayed—" "I shan't keep you a minute, Mr. Braden. It's something I feel I ought to tell you. Mr. Thorpe is quite in his right mind, sir, so you'll appreciate more fully what a shock his proposition was to me. In a word, Mr. Braden, he has offered me a great sum of money if I'll put four of those little pills into a glass of water to-night and give it to him to drink. There's enough poison in them to kill three men in a flash, sir. My God, Mr. Braden, it was—it was terrible!" The man's face was livid. "A great sum of money—" began Braden dumbly. Then the truth struck him like a blow in the face. "Good God, Wade,—he—he wanted you to _kill_ him!" "That's it, sir, that's it," whispered Wade jerkily. "He has an envelope up there with fifty thousand dollars in it. He had me count them a week ago, right before his eyes, and hide the envelope in a drawer. You see how he trusts me, sir? He knows that I could rob him to-night if I wanted to do so. Or what's to prevent my making off with the money after he's gone? Nobody would ever know. But he knows me too well. He trusts me. I was to give him the poison the night after you got home, and I would never be suspected of doing it because the pills have been lying on his table for weeks, ready for him to take at any time. Every one might say that he took them himself, don't you see?" "Then, in God's name, why doesn't he take them,—why does he ask you to give them to him?" cried Braden, an icy perspiration on his brow. "That's the very point, sir," explained Wade. "He says he has tried to do it, but—well, he just can't, sir. Mr. Thorpe is a God-fearing man. He will not take his own life. He—he says he believes there is a hell, Mr. Braden. I just wanted to tell you that I—I can't do what he asks me to do. Not for all the money in the world. He seems to think that I don't believe there is a hell. Anyhow, sir, he appears to think it would be quite all right for me to kill a fellow man. Beg pardon, sir; I forgot that you have been writing all these articles about—" "It's all right, Wade," interrupted Braden. "Tell me, has he made this proposition to any one else? To the nurses, to Murray—any one?" Wade hesitated. "I'm quite sure he hasn't appealed to any one but me, sir, except—that is to say—" "Who else?" "He told me plainly that he couldn't ask any of the nurses to do it, because he thought it ought to be done by a friend or a—member of the family. The doctors, of course, might do it unbeknownst to him, but they won't, sir." "Whom else did he speak to about it?" insisted Braden.