‘Perhaps he argues that by dropping a pinch of arsenic into his master’s medicine now and then he only assists the progress of the disease, and that his crime is something less than murder,’ thought Lucius bitterly. He was angry with himself, because this very day—after suspecting Jacob Wincher, nay, after feeling convinced of his guilt—he had suffered himself to be hoodwinked, and had believed the old servant to be an honest man. He remembered Mr. Otranto’s dictum, so absolutely expressed, and smiled at the fatuity of a man whom the world deemed possessed of almost superhuman powers. ‘Yes, the scheme is transparent. He has admitted the man I saw night after night, and has doubtless made away with all that is most valuable in the collection. He knows that his master’s recovery would be his ruin, and he means to prevent that recovery. His apparent candour this morning was a profound stroke of policy. He took alarm from what I said to his wife—guessed that I had seen the entrance of his accomplice, and played his cards accordingly. Not clever enough for a thief, did you say, Mr. Otranto? Why, here is a man clever enough to carry on simultaneous robbery and murder, and yet to wear the semblance of most consummate innocence. This is evidently a development of intellectual power among the dangerous classes for which your previous experience has not prepared you.’ Lucius laughed the laugh of scorn at the thought of Mr. Otranto’s shortsightedness. But what was he, Lucius, to do? That was the question. How was he to avert the danger from his patient, and yet avoid alarming him? To alarm him might be fatal. To tell a man almost at Death’s door that he had been brought to this pass by a slow poisoner in his own household, would surely be to complete the murder. Where was the sick man with nerves strong enough to endure such a revelation? ‘I must get rid of these Winchers, yet not tell Mr. Sivewright the cause of their dismissal,’ thought Lucius. ‘I can invent some plausible excuse for their disappearance. And when they are gone—Stay, might it not be better to let them stop, and to keep watch over my patient myself—so close a watch, that if foul play were attempted I must discover the delinquent?’ He meditated upon this question for some time; now leaning one way, now the other. ‘No,’ he decided at last; ‘murder shall no longer lurk within the shadow of those walls! At any cost I will get rid of those wretches, with their pretence of long service and fidelity.’ He thought of Mrs. Wincher, whom he had a little while ago considered one of the most well-meaning of women, completely devoted to her young mistress, faithful, affectionate. ‘She may not know the extent of her husband’s iniquity,’ he thought; for it was painful to him to believe that the woman who had hovered about Love’s rosy pathway like a protecting angel was among the vilest of her sex.