“Then it isn’t a simple case of opium-poisoning?”
“It isn’t a simple case, certainly. I don’t say that opium was not administered. By the way, I should be glad if you could find out for me what disguise the Crown Prince was wearing when he went to the Club.”
The Captain drew himself up.
“I ascertained that yesterday. He wore a plain black domino with a hood.”
“Ah! Rather like Weathered’s costume, then?”
I could have answered that question better than Charles, I thought. There had been more than one black domino worn at the fatal dance, but none that had any real semblance to Weathered’s remarkable costume. The pointed peak with the two eye-slits in the cloth instead of a mask had plainly distinguished the founder of the Club from everyone else present. Of course I dared not offer my testimony as a witness. I did not think it prudent even to make a remark. Tarleton might have an object in putting forward this particular view.
It quickly appeared what his object was.
“I don’t think the Commissioner is much inclined to follow up that clue,” Captain Charles said coldly. “They seem to think in the Foreign Office that it would do harm to let any idea get abroad that the Crown Prince was aimed at. It would look as if London wasn’t a safe place for foreign royalties to visit.”
The physician shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
“That has nothing to do with me, Captain Charles. It will be time enough for the Foreign Office to make their view prevail when we have something definite to go upon. At present I am dealing with the cause of death. I want the police, if they can, to find out if the Bolshevik authorities have ever resorted to poison, and if so, what poison they use. I imagine they have no restrictions on opium, and I should be particularly glad to get hold of samples of the opium that is coming into Russia from China just now.”