“No; why, what is that?”
“It looks like a puzzle of some kind.”
“Then it is of no consequence. My husband was forever amusing himself over some such contrivance. All his friends knew how well he liked these toys and frequently sent them to him. This one evidently reached him in Philadelphia.”
Meanwhile I was eying the bit of wire curiously. It was undoubtedly a puzzle, but it had appendages to it that I did not understand.
“It is more than ordinarily complicated,” I observed, moving the rings up and down in a vain endeavor to work them off.
“The better he would like it,” said she.
I kept on working with the rings. Suddenly I gave a painful start. A little prong in the handle of the toy had started out and pricked me.
“You had better not handle it,” said I, and laid it down. But the next minute I took it up again and put it in my pocket. The prick made by this treacherous bit of mechanism was in or near the same place on my thumb as the one I had noticed on the hand of the deceased Mr. Holmes.
There was a fire in the room, and before proceeding further, I cauterized that prick with the end of a red-hot poker. Then I made my adieux to Mrs. Holmes and went immediately to a chemist friend of mine.
“Test the end of this bit of steel for me,” said I. “I have reason to believe it carries with it a deadly poison.”