"What do you mean?" As often, he rather baffled me.
"It's nearly dinner time and we're going out together, Walter, down to
Jacques'."
"Why Jacques'?"
"Because I phoned your friend Belle Balcom and she informed me that that was the place where we would be apt to find the elite of the film world dining."
I acquiesced, of course. We hurried to the apartment first for a few necessary changes and preparations, then we started for the Times Square section in a taxi.
"I never heard of the use of snake venom before," I remarked, settling back in the cushions—"that is, deliberately, by a criminal, to poison anyone."
"There are cases," replied Craig, absently.
"Just how does the venom act?"
"I believe it is generally accepted that there are two agents present in the secretion. One is a peptone and the other a globulin. One is neurotoxic, the other hemolytic. Not only is the general nervous system attacked instantly, but the coagulability of the blood is destroyed. One agent in the venom attacks the nerve cells; the other destroys the red corpuscles."
"You suspected something of this kind, then, when you first examined
Stella Lamar?"