"You give yourself away so splendidly," said Strause. "Aylmer would naturally feel relief from such a powerful opiate as you administered."
"I did not administer the opiate. I gave him two tablespoonfuls from the other bottle. It is, I suppose, within the region of possibility that the medicines may have been shifted into wrong bottles. For that I am not responsible. You will recollect, perhaps, the fact that you visited Aylmer in his room soon after nine o'clock that evening. You were there for a couple of minutes, and came out afterwards, telling me that he was asleep. I noted that you were quite two minutes in the room, by the little clock on the mantelpiece. I also observed that you walked about softly while there. If you bring this charge against me, I can but repeat what happened."
"And who will believe your word? you have no witnesses."
"I hold the bottles," said Strause, with another sneer.
"I see nothing for it," he said, "but to try and get an order to have the body exhumed, and thus have the case properly sifted."
Strause uttered an uneasy laugh. He walked to the window and looked out. Then he returned to Keith.
"You do not know, perhaps," he said, "that the effects of opium are very short-lived, and that long before now all traces of opium would have left the poor fellow's body."
"Let the case be brought openly to trial," was Keith's next remark.
"What! you would have yourself ruined, if not worse?"
"I would rather risk anything than put myself in your power."
As Keith spoke he rose and left the room without even saying good-bye to Strause. All that night he kept to his resolve to sift the matter thoroughly, and then repeated to himself,--
"Anything would be better than getting myself into Strause's power."
But the following morning he received letters from home which caused him to look upon the affair from a fresh point of view. His mother had been seriously ill; his cousin, as he always called Kitty Hepworth, wrote to him to say how nervous she had become. She also said that Mrs. Keith was troubled about money matters, having lately lost a large sum through the failure of an Australian bank. If there was any one on earth whom Keith worshipped, it was his widowed mother. Without a moment's delay he wrote to her to tell her of his unexpected legacy, and to ask her to put at least two thousand pounds of the money to her own credit. He further resolved not to give her anxiety by allowing the case of poor Aylmer's death to be investigated. In short, he deliberately, and without at all realizing what he was doing, put himself in the major's power.