"Let me see if there is a card." But Jim searched in vain for the card of the donor. All at once his suspicions arose. "Don't touch them. Better let the maid throw them out. Fruit from unknown persons might not be the healthiest thing in the world." "What do you think?" "That in all probability they are poisoned. But there's no need trying to prove my theory right or wrong. Ask Jones. He'll tell you to throw them away." "Horrible!" Florence shuddered. "But they do not want to poison me. I'm too valuable. They want me alive." "Who can say?" returned Jim gloomily. "They may have learned that they can not beat us, no matter what card they turn up. I may be wrong, but take my advice and throw them away.... Good lord, what's that?" startled. "Some one cried!" "Oh, Miss Florence!" exclaimed the maid, terror-stricken as she recalled Susan's act. "Miss Susan took a peach from the basket and was eating it on the way to her room!" "Good heavens!" gasped Jim. "I was right. The fruit was poisoned." Jim had heard enough to send for a specialist he knew. The specialist arrived about twenty minutes after Susan's first cry. To his keen eye it looked like a certain poison which had for its basis the venom of the cobra. "Will she live?" "Oh, yes. But she'll be a wreck for some months. Send her to the hospital where I can visit her frequently. And I'll take that peach along for analysis. No police affair?" "No. We dare not call them in," said Jim. "That's your affair. I'll send down the ambulance. Keep her quiet. She'll have a species of paralysis; but that'll work off under treatment. A strange business." "So it is," agreed Jim grimly. Florence knelt beside her friend's bed and cried softly. "You called me just in time. An hour later, nothing would have saved her. She would have been paralyzed for life." Jim accompanied the doctor to the door and went in search of Jones. He found the taciturn butler eying the fruit basket, his face gray and drawn, though his eyes blazed with fury. "Poison!" "A pretty bad poison, too," said Jim. "We can't do anything. We've just got to sit still. But in the end we'll get them. That she devil...." "No, my friend; that he devil. The woman is mad over him and would commit any crime at his bidding. But this is his work. We want him. He wasn't without courage to send this fruit, knowing that I would instantly suspect the sender. Yet, I have no definite proof. I could not hold him in court in law. He will have bought the fruit piece by piece, the basket in a basket shop. He will have injected the poison himself when alone. Poor Susan! That messenger was without doubt some one over whom he holds the threat of the death chair. That's the way he works." Jim tramped the room while Jones carried the fruit to the kitchen. The butler returned after a while. "What about that blank sheet of paper?"