How warning was conveyed to Sir Burnham I know not, unless by some
indiscretion of Nahemah, but, instead of returning to the public
school from which he had come to Friar's Park, Roger Coverly was sent
abroad in haste, accompanied by a private tutor. The date of his
departure corresponded with that which I associate with the beginning
of my downfall.
Nahemah threatened to present herself to her mother, and painfully
aware that such a course (which, nevertheless, I recognized her to be
quite capable of adopting) would spell disaster, I fell in with her
wishes. Two months later we were established, Nahemah, Cassim and I,
within two miles of the new residence of Roger Coverly and his tutor
in Basle.
The circumstances attendant upon the death of Roger Coverly have
hitherto been veiled in obscurity, and although Sir Burnham suspected
the truth, in the first place he had no evidence, and in the second
place, because of the existence of Nahemah, I knew that he dared not
attempt to prove it.
Briefly, I had perfected that Chinese poison called in the northern
provinces _hlangkuna_. By a series of dangerous experiments I had
convinced myself that it was almost identical with _contarella_, the
preparation made notorious by the Borgia family. Therefore I concluded
that _contarella_ came to Rome from the East, possibly via Palestine.
Inoculating with _hlangkuna_, I found, produced death in two hours
(_contarella_--one hour and forty-five minutes) leaving no trace by
which the means employed could be discovered.
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