“Blast the creature! Serves him right.”
“Shut up.”
The door into the private bar opened. Old Abel came in followed by Norman Cubitt. Cubitt took three darts from a collection in a pewter pot on the bar and moved in front of the dart board.
“I’ll be there in a moment,” said a woman’s voice from the passage. “Don’t start without me.”
Abel walked into the inglenook and put a bottle on the mantelpiece.
“Well, souls,” he said, “reckon we’m settled the hash of they vermin. If thurr’s not a corpse on the premises afore long, I’ll be greatly astonished.”
Chapter II
Advance by Watchman
i
The bottle was a small one and, as Sebastian Parish had remarked, it was conspicuously labelled. The word POISON in scarlet on a white ground, ran diagonally across an attached label. It struck a note of interjection and alarm, and focussed the attention of the five men. Few who read that warning escape a sudden jolt of the imagination.
Parish said: “Mr. Watchman thinks you are a public danger, Abel. He’s afraid we’ll all be poisoned.”
“I’m afraid he’ll poison himself,” said Watchman.
“Who, sir? Me?” asked Abel. “Not a bit of it. I be a mortal cautious sort of chap when it comes to this manner of murderous tipple, Mr. Watchman.”
“I hope you are,” said Cubitt from the dart board.
“You’re not going to leave it on the mantelshelf, Father?” asked Will.
“No fear of that, sonny. I’ll stow it away careful.”
“You’d much better get rid of it altogether,” said Watchman. “Don’t put it away somewhere. You’ll forget about it and some day someone will take a sniff at it to find out what it is. Let me take it back to the chemist at Illington. I’d very much like to have a word with that gentleman.”
“Lord love you,” said Abel opening his eyes very wide, “us’ve not finished with they bowldacious varmints yet, my sonnies. If so be they’ve got a squeak left in ’em us’ll give ’em another powerful whiff and finish ’em off.”