American Sherlocks Nick Rennison (best big ereader txt) 📖

‘If it had been cyanide,’ replied Craig, looking reflectively at the two jars before him on the table, ‘these blood specimens would be blue in colour and clotted. But they are not. Then, too, there is a substance in the saliva which is used in the process of digestion. It gives a reaction which might very easily be mistaken for a slight trace of cyanide. I think that explains what the chemist discovered; no more, no less. The cyanide theory does not fit.’

‘One chemist hinted at nux vomica,’ volunteered the coroner. ‘He said it wasn’t nux vomica, but that the blood test showed something very much like it. Oh, we’ve looked for morphine chloroform, ether, all the ordinary poisons, besides some of the little known alkaloids. Believe me, Professor Kennedy, it was asphyxia.’

I could tell by the look that crossed Kennedy’s face that at last a ray of light had pierced the darkness. ‘Have you any spirits of turpentine in the office?’ he asked.

The coroner shook his head and took a step toward the telephone as if to call the drug-store in town.

‘Or ether?’ interrupted Craig. ‘Ether will do.’

‘Oh, yes, plenty of ether.’

Craig poured a little of one of the blood samples from the jar into a tube and added a few drops of ether. A cloudy dark precipitate formed. He smiled quietly and said, half to himself, ‘I thought so.’

‘What is it?’ asked the coroner eagerly. ‘Nux vomica?’

Craig shook his head as he stared at the black precipitate. ‘You were perfectly right about the asphyxiation, Doctor,’ he remarked slowly, ‘but wrong as to the cause. It wasn’t carbon monoxide or illuminating-gas. And you, Mr Whitney, were right about the poison, too. Only it is a poison neither of you ever heard of.’

‘What is it?’ we asked simultaneously.

‘Let me take these samples and make some further tests. I am sure of it, but it is new to me. Wait till tomorrow night, when my chain of evidence is completed. Then you are all cordially invited to attend at my laboratory at the university. I’ll ask you, Mr Whitney, to come armed with a warrant for John or Jane Doe. Please see that the Wainwrights, particularly Marian, are present. You can tell Inspector O’Connor that Mr Vanderdyke and Mrs Ralston are required as material witnesses – anything so long as you are sure that these five persons are present. Goodnight, gentlemen.’

We rode back to the city in silence, but as we neared the station, Kennedy remarked: ‘You see, Walter, these people are like the newspapers. They are floundering around in a sea of unrelated facts. There is more than they think back of this crime. I’ve been revolving in my mind how it will be possible to get some inkling about this concession of Vanderdyke’s, the mining claim of Mrs Ralston, and the exact itinerary of the Wainwright trip in the Far East. Do you think you can get that information for me? I think it will take me all day tomorrow to isolate this poison and get things in convincing shape on that score. Meanwhile if you can see Vanderdyke and Mrs Ralston you can help me a great deal. I am sure you will find them very interesting people.’

‘I have been told that she is quite a female high financier,’ I replied, tacitly accepting Craig’s commission. ‘Her story is that her claim is situated near the mine of a group of powerful American capitalists, who are opposed to having any competition, and on the strength of that story she has been raking in the money right and left. I don’t know Vanderdyke, never heard of him before, but no doubt he has some equally interesting game.’

‘Don’t let them think you connect them with the case, however,’ cautioned Craig.

Early the next morning I started out on my quest for facts, though not so early but that Kennedy had preceded me to his work in his laboratory. It was not very difficult to get Mrs Ralston to talk about her troubles with the government. In fact, I did not even have to broach the subject of the death of Templeton. She volunteered the information that in his handling of her case he had been very unjust to her, in spite of the fact that she had known him well a long time ago. She even hinted that she believed he represented the combination of capitalists who were using the government to aid their own monopoly and prevent the development of her mine. Whether it was an obsession of her mind, or merely part of her clever scheme, I could not make out. I noted, however, that when she spoke of Templeton it was in a studied, impersonal way, and that she was at pains to lay the blame for the governmental interference rather on the rival mine owners.

It quite surprised me when I found from the directory that Vanderdyke’s office was on the floor below in the same building. Like Mrs Ralston’s, it was open, but not doing business, pending the investigation by the Post-Office Department.

Vanderdyke was a type of which I had seen many before. Well dressed to the extreme, he displayed all those evidences of prosperity which are the stock in trade of the man with securities to sell. He grasped my hand when I told him I was going to present the other side of the Post-Office cases and held it between both of his as if he had known me all his life. Only the fact that he had never seen me before prevented his calling me by my first name. I took mental note of his stock of jewellery, the pin in his tie that might almost have been the Hope diamond, the heavy watch chain across his chest, and a very brilliant seal ring of lapis