"It won't hurt the cat," he explained, "and it may help us."
As I looked at the cat's eye it seemed to enlarge, even under the glare of a light, shining forth, as it were, like the proverbial cat's eye under a bed.
What did it mean?
Was there such a thing, I wondered hastily, as the drug of the evil eye?
"What have you found?" I queried.
"Something very much like the so-called 'weed of madness,' I think," he replied slowly.
"The weed of madness?" I repeated.
"Yes. It is similar to the Mexican toloache and the Hindu datura, which you must have heard about."
I had heard of these weird drugs, but they had always seemed to be so far away and to belong rather to the atmosphere of civilizations different from New York. Yet, I reflected, what was to prevent the appearance of anything in such a cosmopolitan city, especially in a case so unusual as that which had so far baffled even Kennedy's skill?
"You know the jimson weed—the Jamestown weed, as it is so often called?" he continued, explaining. "It grows almost everywhere in the world, but most thrivingly in the tropics. All the poisons that I have mentioned are related to it in some way, I believe."