the doctor's prescriptions. The knowledge should be useful, to say the
least. Siddle's reputation needn't suffer, but, unless I am greatly
mistaken, you will have the whip hand of him in future."

The prospect was alluring. Elkin would enjoy showing up the chemist, who
had treated him rather as a precocious infant of late.

"By jing!" he cried, "I'm on that. Bet you a quid--But, no. You'd
hardly lay against your own opinion. Just wait a tick. I'll bring 'em."

Furneaux stared fixedly at the table while his host was absent. His
conscience was not pricking him with regard to an unmerited slur on the
country chemists of Great Britain. All is fair in love and the detection
of crime, and he simply had to get hold of those bottles by some daring
yet plausible ruse.

"Now--I wonder!" he muttered, as Elkin's step sounded on the stairs.

"There you are!" grinned the horse-dealer. "Take a dose of the last one.
It'll stir your liver to some tune."

Furneaux drew the corks out of both bottles, and sniffed the contents.
Then he tasted, with much tongue-smacking.

"Um!" he said. "Stale laudanum, for a start. I expected as much. Bought
by the gallon and sold by the drop. Is that the dogcart with my
pictures?"

"Yes."