Its breath simply seemed
to stop.
Next he took the gourd I had seen on the table and with a knife
scraped off just the minutest particle of the black licorice-like
stuff that encrusted it. He dissolved the particle in some
alcohol and with a sterilised needle repeated his experiment on a
second mouse. The effect was precisely similar to that produced
by the blood on the first.
It did not seem to me that anyone showed any emotion except
possibly the slight exclamation that escaped Miss Marian
Wainwright. I fell to wondering whether it was prompted by a soft
heart or a guilty conscience.
We were all intent on what Craig was doing, especially Doctor
Nott, who now broke in with a question.
"Professor Kennedy, may I ask a question? Admitting that the
first mouse died in an apparently similar manner to the second,
what proof have you that the poison is the same in both cases?
And if it is the same can you show that it affects human beings
in the same way, and that enough of it has been discovered in the
blood of the victims to have caused their death? In other words,
I want the last doubt set aside. How do you know absolutely that
this poison which you discovered in my office last night in that
black precipitate when you added the ether--how do you know that
it asphyxiated the victims?"
If ever Craig startled me it was by his quiet reply.
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