"Two of us can't go abreast, and you'll only get hurt," he said, speaking
with a calmness that was majestic in the circumstances.

"The nicotine is gone!" yelped Furneaux; both saw that the safe
stood open.

Behind the dispensary was a small passage, whence the stairs mounted, and
a door led to the kitchen. That door was closed now, though it was open
when Furneaux ransacked the house. Therefore, they made that way at once.
No ordinary lock could resist Winter's shoulder, and he soon mastered
this barrier. But the kitchen was empty--the outer door locked but
unbolted. Since it is practically impossible for the strongest man to
pull a door open, the two made for the window, and tore at screws and
catch with eager fingers. Furneaux, light and nimble-footed, scrambled
through first, so it was he who found Siddle lying in the orchard beyond
the wall of the yard. The unhappy wretch had swallowed nearly the whole
remaining contents of the bottle of nicotine, or enough to poison a score
of robust men. He presented a lamentable and distressing spectacle. Some
of the more venturesome passers-by, who had crowded after the detectives
and Peters, could not bear to look on, and slunk away in horror.

Furneaux soon brought an emetic, which failed to act. Siddle breathed his
last while the glass was at his lips.

In that moment of crisis only three men did not lose their heads. Winter
cleared away the gapers, while Furneaux remained with the body. P.C.
Robinson came up the hill at a run, and was sent for a stretcher,
bringing from Hobbs's shop the very one on which the ill-fated Adelaide
Melhuish was carried from the river bank.