I will prove to
you that it is not poisoned. I will drink it.' And he raised the glass
to his trembling lips. In that moment Aribert saw that old Hans, at
any rate, was not an accomplice of Jules. Springing up from his
seat, he knocked the glass from the aged servitor's hands, and the
fragments of it fell with a light tinkling crash partly on the table
and partly on the floor. The Prince and the servant gazed at one
another in a distressing and terrible silence.
There was a slight noise, and Aribert looked aside. He saw that
Eugen's body had slipped forward limply over the left arm of his
chair; the Prince's arms hung straight and lifeless; his eyes were
closed; he was unconscious.
'Hans!' murmured Aribert. 'Hans! What is this?'
Chapter Twenty-Five THE STEAM LAUNCH
MR TOM JACKSON's notion of making good his escape from the
hotel by means of a steam launch was an excellent one, so far as it
went, but Theodore Racksole, for his part, did not consider that it
went quite far enough.
Theodore Racksole opined, with peculiar glee, that he now had a
tangible and definite clue for the catching of the Grand Babylon's
ex-waiter. He knew nothing of the Port of London, but he
happened to know a good deal of the far more complicated, though
somewhat smaller, Port of New York, and he sure there ought to
be no extraordinary difficulty in getting hold of Jules'
steam launch.
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