“I look on this case throughout as one of murder by suggestion. Armstrong did very wrong to leave this bottle in his sister’s possession. The very precautions she took to keep it safely, as she thought, show that her mind was exercised by it. I shouldn’t wonder at all if Weathered, who was a clever man in his way, actually did detect some latent fancies in the little woman’s head as to how it might be used, and worked on them till he convinced her that they were serious. Then no sooner does he hear of the existence of the bottle than it fascinates him. An unknown drug, one whose effects will defy analysis--what a prize for a man who is fast sinking into a hardened criminal! Remember that if Armstrong had not happened to bring a sample of his find to me you might now be under sentence for the murder.” I shook as I recognized the truth of what he said. Even Tarleton’s skill might have failed to demonstrate the presence of a strange drug unknown to the whole medical world. “This accursed bottle next has the same effect on Mrs. Weathered. She is a good woman and she has been a faithful wife and a forgiving one. I believe every word of her story. I fully believe that she took the bottle with no intention to do anything but destroy it and its contents. But no sooner is it in her keeping than she succumbs to its temptation. She is fascinated by the idea of the invisible death it can deal. All kinds of motives and excuses spring up in her mind like spectres conjured up by a magician. So she becomes a murderess in intention, a murderess by proxy, one may say. “Even Madame Bonnell, I think it most likely, had no idea of killing Weathered before this bottle came into her hands. She had committed one murder already and she seems to have had a narrow escape that time. She was a prudent woman, too, a woman to weigh risks carefully before taking them. I think it quite probable that her only idea at first was to use this bottle to extort money from Mrs. Weathered. But very quickly she was in its power. Then it was that she began weaving the romance of Weathered’s revengeful patients, a picture only too well founded on fact. She may have hoped to find an enemy of Weathered’s to do the job for her; however, you saved her the trouble. She saw her chance, and that night she had a double security. From first to last it is evident that she trusted to the Crown Prince’s name to pull her through everything, and in a way it did.” “What made you think she had committed a crime in France, sir?” “I didn’t. It was a mere shot in the dark. I asked Charles to get her finger-print without her knowing, and I took it over to Paris on the bare chance that she might be known to the French police. It is fortunate that she was.”