“Well, then came the report about the Italian’s threats, and I saw I must act at once... I meant to break into the old man’s room, shoot him, and get away again. It was a big risk, but I thought I could manage it. Then we heard that he was ill--that there’d been a consultation. Perhaps the fates were going to do it for me! Good Lord, if that could only be!...” Granice stopped and wiped his forehead: the open window did not seem to have cooled the room. “Then came word that he was better; and the day after, when I came up from my office, I found Kate laughing over the news that he was to try a bit of melon. The house-keeper had just telephoned her--all Wrenfield was in a flutter. The doctor himself had picked out the melon, one of the little French ones that are hardly bigger than a large tomato--and the patient was to eat it at his breakfast the next morning. “In a flash I saw my chance. It was a bare chance, no more. But I knew the ways of the house--I was sure the melon would be brought in over night and put in the pantry ice-box. If there were only one melon in the ice-box I could be fairly sure it was the one I wanted. Melons didn’t lie around loose in that house--every one was known, numbered, catalogued. The old man was beset by the dread that the servants would eat them, and he took a hundred mean precautions to prevent it. Yes, I felt pretty sure of my melon ... and poisoning was much safer than shooting. It would have been the devil and all to get into the old man’s bedroom without his rousing the house; but I ought to be able to break into the pantry without much trouble. “It was a cloudy night, too--everything served me. I dined quietly, and sat down at my desk. Kate had one of her usual headaches, and went to bed early. As soon as she was gone I slipped out. I had got together a sort of disguise--red beard and queer-looking ulster. I shoved them into a bag, and went round to the garage. There was no one there but a half-drunken machinist whom I’d never seen before. That served me, too. They were always changing machinists, and this new fellow didn’t even bother to ask if the car belonged to me. It was a very easy-going place... “Well, I jumped in, ran up Broadway, and let the car go as soon as I was out of Harlem. Dark as it was, I could trust myself to strike a sharp pace. In the shadow of a wood I stopped a second and got into the beard and ulster. Then away again--it was just eleven-thirty when I got to Wrenfield.