He
recognized the odor. It was Persian. He and Mason had run across it
unpleasantly, once upon a time, in Teheran. He was not familiar with
the chemistry of the concoction. He corked the bottle tightly. Forbes
came in groggily.
"Well! Did you ever see such an ass, Crawford? To open a strange
bottle like that and sniff at it!"
"Here's an atomizer. They must have used that. Never touched their
victims."
"It evaporates quickly, though. But the effect on a sleeping person
would be long. Now, who the deuce is this chap Webb? A confederate?"
"Still dizzy, eh? No; Thomas is a dupe. Don't you get it? He's Lord
Monckton. Come on; we'll go down and straighten out the kinks."
So they went down-stairs. And Forbes tells me that when Thomas
acknowledged his identity, Kitty did not fall on his neck. Instead,
she walked up to him, burning with fury: so pretty that Forbes almost
fell in love with her, then and there.
"So! You pretended to be poor, and entered my home to make play behind
our backs! Despicable! We took you in without question, generously,
kindly, and treated you as one of us; and all the while you were
laughing in your sleeve!"
"Kitty!" remonstrated Killigrew, who felt twenty years gone from his
shoulders.
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