Daily Yellowstone journal., 1891-04-16
A MYSTERIOUS CASE.

It was a my. tery to me, but not to
the other doc DTS. They took, as wa
natural, the worst possible view Of the
matter, and accepted the only solution
which the tacts seemed TO warrant.
But they ar men, and l am a woman;
besides, l anew the nurse well, and
could not believe her capable of willful
deceit, much less of the heinous crime
which deceit in this case involved. So
TO me the affair was a mystery.
The facts were these.
My patient, a young typewriter, seem
ingly without friends or enemies, lay in
the small room of a boarding house
afflicted with a painful but not danger
Gus malady. Though she was compar-
atively helpless her vital organs were
strong, and we never had a moments
uneasiness concerning her till one
morning when we found her in an al
most dying condition from having
taken, as we quickly discovered, a dose
of poison instead of the soothing MKT
une which had been left for her with
the nurse. Poisonl and no one, not
sven herself or the nurse, could explain
how the same got into the room, much
less into her medicine. And when l
came 10 study the situation | found
myself as much at a loss a. they indeed,
more 50, for l knew l had made no
mistake in preparing the mixture, and
that even if l had this especial poison
could not have found its way into it,
owing 70 the fact that there neither
was nor ever had been a drop of it in
my possession.
The mixture, then. was pure when il
left my hand, and according TO the
nurse, whom, as / have said, j implicit
ly believe. it went into the glass pure.
And yet when two hours later. without
her having left the room or anybody
coming into it. she found occasion TO
administer the draught, poison was in
the cup, and the patient wa only saved
from death by the most immediate
and energetic measures, not only on
her part, but on that Of DIR. Holmes.
whom in her haste and perturbation
she had called in from the adjacent
house.
The patient, young, innocent, unfort-
innate, but of a strangely courageous
disposition, betrayed nothing but the
utmost surprise at the peril she had 5
narrowly escaped. When DIR. Holmes
intimated that perhaps she had been
tired Of suffering, and had herself found
means Of putting the deadly drug into
her medicine, she opened her great gray
ewes with such a look Of childlike sur
prise and reproach that he blushed
and murmured some sort Of apology.
Poison myself" she cried; when
you promise me that / shall get we1l
You do not know what a horror I have
of dying in debt, or you would never
say that"
This was some time after the critical
had passed, and there were in
the room Mrs. Dayton, the landlady,
DIR. Holmes, the nur and myself At
the ~utterance Of these words we all felt
ashamed and cast looks of increased in
terest at the poor girl
She wa very lovely. Though with
out means, and to all appearance with
out friends, she possessed in great de
gree the charm of winsOmeness, and not
sven her many suffehngs, nor the in
dignation under which she was then
Iaboring, could quite rob her counte-
nance of that tender and confiding ex-
preston which so often redeems the
plainest face and makes beauty doubly
attractive.
"Dr. Holmes does not know you" 1
fastened TO say. 81 do, and utterly re-
pei for you any such insinuation- In
return, will you tell me if there is any
one In the world whom you can call
your enemyl Though the chief mys-
terry is how 50 deadly and unusual a
poison could have gotten into a clean
Rlass without the knowledge of your
self or the nurse, still il might not be
amiss 70 know If there is any one, here
or elsewhere, who for any reason might
desire your death"
The surprise in the ehildhke eyes IN
creased rather than diminished
Il don't know what to say" she muir