“Hartley thinks something may have been put in my wine.”
“What for?” the doctor asked. “What had these people to gain by drugging you? Suppose for some far-fetched reason they wanted to have Silas Blackburn put out of the way. They couldn’t make you do it by drugging you. At any rate, they couldn’t have had a hand in this afternoon. Mind, I’m not saying you had a thing to do with it yourself, but I don’t believe you were drugged. Any drug likely to be used in wine would probably have sent you into a deep sleep. And your symptoms on waking up are scarcely sharp enough. Sorry, boy. Sounds more like aphasia. The path you’ve been treading sometimes leads to that black country, and it’s there that hates sharpen unknown. I remember a case where a tramp returned and killed a farmer who had refus
