"Well, then came the report about the Italian's threats, and I saw I
must act at once... I meant to break into the old man's room,
shoot him, and get away again. It was a big risk, but I thought I
could manage it. Then we heard that he was ill--that there'd been a
consultation. Perhaps the fates were going to do it for me! Good
Lord, if that could only be! ..."

Granice stopped and wiped his forehead: the open window did not seem
to have cooled the room.

"Then came word that he was better; and the day after, when I came
up from my office, I found Kate laughing over the news that he was
to try a bit of melon. The house-keeper had just telephoned her--all
Wrenfield was in a flutter. The doctor himself had picked out the
melon, one of the little French ones that are hardly bigger than a
large tomato--and the patient was to eat it at his breakfast the
next morning.

"In a flash I saw my chance. It was a bare chance, no more. But I
knew the ways of the house--I was sure the melon would be brought in
over night and put in the pantry ice-box. If there were only one
melon in the ice-box I could be fairly sure it was the one I wanted.
Melons didn't lie around loose in that house--every one was known,
numbered, catalogued. The old man was beset by the dread that the
servants would eat them, and he took a hundred mean precautions to
prevent it. Yes, I felt pretty sure of my melon ... and poisoning
was much safer than shooting. It would have been the devil and all
to get into the old man's bedroom without his rousing the house; but
I ought to be able to break into the pantry without much trouble.