Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 56: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE PHYSICIAN AND THE LADY ov dale, that I was horrified on making this discovery, — nay, more than horrified, I was bewildered and dismayed. To no human being had I ever given the smallest phial of that poison. IJ never eliminated it but twice. On the first occasion, the bottle which contained it was broken along with several other, as you must remember, on that night when you visited me in Conduit Street.” ‘“T do remember. It was through my carelessness or awkwardness,”’ said Lady Saxondale, “‘ and you know how sorry I was. But pray proceed.” “On the second occasion when I eliminated the poison, ‘I put my own seal upon the cork of the bottle, and I locked it up in a drawer in my laboratory. That bottle is still there; the cork has not been tampered with, the seal has never been broken. And yet, as sure as l am speaking to you now, that woman died of the very poison which I discovered. That it could have been obtained elsewhere was impossible. I am too intimately acquainted with all the fruits of chemical research to admit the supposition for a moment that any other experimentalist has succeeded in eliminating this poison, which is far more powerful than Prussic acid. You may conceive, therefore, how bewildered, how perplexed, how dismayed I was.”’ ‘“ Naturally so, my dear Doctor Ferney,’’ observed Lady Saxondale, who was herself far more dismayed than ever the physician could have been, although she concealed the outward expression of her terror with a wonderful dissimula- tion of a mere ordinary interest in what he was reciting. “I at once repaired,” resumed the doctor, “‘ to the person who had procured for me the corpse. From him I obtained the name which was on the coffin of the stolen body. Again I must ask you to forgive me the necessity of touching upon details so indelicate, so nauseating to yourself — ”’ “Make no apology, doctor,’ said Lady Saxondale, with every appearance of the utmost affability, ‘‘ but continue your strange and exciting narrative.” ‘“ Provided with the name of the woman,” continued the physician, ‘‘I on the following day, when having an hour’s leisure, instituted the requisite inquiries at the parochial registrar's office, and discovered that this woman, Mabel Stewart, died at Saxondale House. I then searched a file of newspapers, and found that an inquest had sat upon the ) GOMIIGDOOKS (S(O)