"All right," he said. "He can come up in a moment. What have you got there--oh? The milk for your Mistress. Well, put it down on the table, and tell Tumpany to come up. Bring him up yourself, Blanche, and make him be quiet. We mustn't risk waking Mistress." The housemaid put the tray down upon the writing table and left the room, closing the door after her. It had hardly swung into place when Lothian had whipped open a drawer in the table. Standing upon a pile of note-paper with its vermilion heading of "The Old House, Mortland Royal" was a square oil bottle with its silver plated top. In a few twists of firm and resolute fingers, the top was loosened. The man took the bottle from the drawer and set it upon the tray, close to the glass of milk. Then, with infinite care, he slowly withdrew the top. The flattened needle which depended from it was damp with the dews of death. A tiny bead of crystalline liquid, no bigger than a pin's head, hung from the slanting point. Lothian plunged the needle into the glass of milk, moving it this way and that. He heard footsteps on the stairs, and with the same stealthy dexterity he replaced the cap of the bottle and closed the drawer. He was lighting a cigarette when Blanche knocked and entered, followed by Tumpany. "What is it, Tumpany?" he said, as the maid once more took up her tray and left the room with it. "I was thinking, sir, that we haven't got a cleaning rod packed for the ten-bores. I quite forgot it. The twelve-bore rods won't reach through thirty-two-and-a-half barrels. And all the cases are strapped and locked now, sir. You've got the keys." "By Jove, no, we never thought of it. But those two special rods I had made at Tolley's--where are they?" "Here, sir," the man answered going to the gun-cupboard. "Oh, very well. Unscrew one and stick it in your pocket. We can put it in the case when we're in the train. It's a corridor train, and when we've started you can come along to my carriage and I'll give you the key of the ten-bore case." "Very good, sir. The trap's come. I'll just take this suit case down and then I'll get Trust. He can sit behind with me." "Yes. I'll be down in a minute." Tumpany plunged downstairs with the suit case. Lothian screwed up the bottle in the drawer and, holding it in his hand, went to his bedroom. He met Blanche in the corridor. "Mistress is fast asleep, sir," the pleasant-faced girl said, "so I just put her milk on the table and came out quietly." "Thank you, Blanche. I shall be down in a minute." In his bedroom, Lothian poured water into the bowl upon the washstand and shook a few dark red crystals of permanganate of potash into the water, which immediately became a purplish pink. He plunged his hands into this water, with the little bottle, now tightly stoppered again, in one of them. For two minutes he remained thus. Then he withdrew his hands and the bottle, drying them on a towel.