sleepiness, his stupidity, are likely to have been assumed."

"I do not think he is acting; he has not the ability to deceive us like
that."

"Well, then, what if the Countess took him the second drink?"

"Oh! oh! That is the purest conjecture. There is nothing whatever to
suggest or support that."

"Then how explain the finding of the vial near the porter's seat?"

"May it not have been dropped there on purpose?" put in the Commissary,
with another flash of intelligence.

"On purpose?" queried the detective, crossly, foreseeing an answer that
would not please him.

"On purpose to bring suspicion on the lady?"

"I don't see it in that light. That would imply that she was not in the
plot, and plot there certainly was; everything points to it. The
drugging, the open window, the maid's escape."

"A plot, no doubt, but organized by whom? These two women only? Could
either of them have struck the fatal blow? Hardly. Women have the wit to
conceive, but neither courage nor brute force to execute. There was a
man in this, rest assured."

"Granted. But who? That fire-eating Sir Collingham?" quickly asked the