Hollyer."

"I am not so sure," declared Hollyer doubtfully. "There was a feeling
of suspicion and--before me--polite hatred that would have gone a good
way towards it. All the same there _was_ something more definite.
Millicent told me this the day after I went there. There is no doubt
that a few months ago Creake deliberately planned to poison her with
some weed-killer. She told me the circumstances in a rather distressed
moment, but afterwards she refused to speak of it again--even weakly
denied it--and, as a matter of fact, it was with the greatest of
difficulty that I could get her at any time to talk about her husband
or his affairs. The gist of it was that she had the strongest
suspicion that Creake doctored a bottle of stout which he expected she
would drink for her supper when she was alone. The weed-killer,
properly labelled, but also in a beer bottle, was kept with other
miscellaneous liquids in the same cupboard as the beer but on a high
shelf. When he found that it had miscarried he poured away the
mixture, washed out the bottle and put in the dregs from another.
There is no doubt in my mind that if he had come back and found
Millicent dead or dying he would have contrived it to appear that she
had made a mistake in the dark and drunk some of the poison before she
found out."

"Yes," assented Carrados. "The open way; the safe way."

"You must understand that they live in a very small style, Mr.
Carrados, and Millicent is almost entirely in the man's power. The
only servant they have is a woman who comes in for a few hours every
day. The house is lonely and secluded. Creake is sometimes away for
days and nights at a time, and Millicent, either through pride or