of something which dropped from you
when you were round at our place this morning.
Your suspicions seemed to be aroused by that
smell of opium which you were able to discover
upon my poor mistress's lips?"

"Eh, what! you think there's been foul play,
do you? Ah, well, I'm not surprised."

Surprised! No, indeed. That must be
strange case of iniquity, indeed, that could
surprise Dr. Giles, surgeon to the police force.
Squalor, crime, deceit, and concealment formed
the very atmosphere in which this man lived.
Yet he had not become a hard man either. Only
he could not be astonished. He was bankrupt
as to that original stock-in-trade of surprise with
which we all start in life pretty well provided.

"I don't wish to say anything about 'foul
play,' sir, as yet," said Cantanker; " only there
is circumstances connected with the case which
I am free to own have awakened my suspicions,
and which I should wish to communicate to you
immediate."

"Well, my good lady, and what are those?"
inquired the doctor, taking up a pen ready to
make notes of her answers.

"Well, sir, in the first place. The lady of the
house in which my poor mistress was living was
not on good terms with my mistress."

"Ay, ay, ay," ejaculated the doctor, making
a note.

"They had had a regular quarrel on the very
day preceding her death, and Mrs. Penmore had
gone so far as to say that my poor mistress was
'not fit to live.' "

The doctor pursed up his lips and wrote again.
"But now comes the most suspicious part of
all, sir," Cantanker went on. " It is my custom—
or rather it was my custom—to take up my
mistress's supper—poor dear thing—every night
into her room. Well, sir, on this particular
evening, just as I was preparing the meal,
down comes Mrs. Penmore into the kitchen,
which she never did before in the evening, and
begs and entreats me to give up my usual practice,
and to let her take up my poor lady's supper
that once. Sir, I resisted and refused her over
and over again, but she went on persisting, and
cajoling, and saying that she wanted to make her
peace with my mistress after what had occurred
in the afternoon—meaning the quarrel between
them—in short, she was that persevering, that
at last I gave way, though very unwilling, and
she actually took the tray out of my hands,
though—you must know—smiling all the time
in play-like, and carried it up-stairs.

"Sir, I stood and listened at the bottom of
the stairs, for I couldn't rightly understand it all,
and I heard her stop and turn into a room on the
first floor, my mistress's apartments being on the
second. She went into this room, tray and all,
and stayed there some time, and then she came
out and continued ascending the stairs, but
slowly, and in a hesitating way like. She seemed
to stop outside the door, too, for a short time,
and then she knocked and went in."

"She might have stopped outside to get
breath, you know," said the doctor. "There is
nothing in that."

"Well, sir, I tell you what happened just as it
did happen," replied Cantanker.

"Tell me," said Doctor Giles, after thinking a
little while, " what did this supper consist of?
What was there on the tray?"

"There was two eggs lightly poached on toast
and a jug of stout."

"Did any remains of those articles come
down?" asked the doctor.

"The eggs, sir, was nearly untouched, but the
stout was all drunk."

The next question was put very earnestly and
quickly:

"Have you preserved what came down?"

"Sir, I have not. As to the eggs, feeling a
slight sinking, I ate them myself. For the
stout, it was all gone as I have said."

"And has the jug been washed out?"

"Yes, sir, it has, and is as clean as when it
was made."

"Ah, that's unfortunate. You did not feel
any ill effects after eating the eggs?"

"I had a severe heartburn in the night, sir;
but to that I am accustomed, as it gnaws at me
pretty well every night of my life."

"And when were your suspicions first
excited?" inquired the doctor.

"Directly my poor mistress died, sir. I thought
then of the quarrel, and of Mrs. Penmore's
anxiety to take the supper-tray up, and putting
all together, I began to suspect. For I knew
what sort of terms they'd both been on almost
ever since my mistress entered the house, and
how my poor lady was no favourite with Mrs.
Penmore, nor never had been."

The doctor sat and reflected again, biting the
top of his pen, and looking in an absent manner
at Jane Cantanker.

"It is a pity," he said, at last, "that you
washed out that jug."

"There is another circumstance connected
with it that I should wish to mention,"
remarked the woman.

"Yes, and what is that?"

"My mistress, when I went up-stairs to take
down the supper-tray, objected very strongly to
the stout, and said that it was the nastiest she
had ever tasted."

"She said that, did she?" asked the doctor,
shrewdly. " That's very important!" And he
made a note of it forthwith.

"Well," said the doctor, rising—for his large
experience of persons of Miss Cantanker's class
had taught him that they never know when to
go, and always stop where they are till the
propriety of a move is suggested to them from
without—"I suppose there is nothing more to be
said now, and I will come round and proceed to
the necessary investigations this afternoon."

And with that he brought the interview to a
close, and, after escorting his visitor to the
door, went back to the surgery, and to a snug