The Social Gangster

by Arthur B. Reeve

Next he took from the shelf over his table a bottle marked alcoholic solution, potassium hydrate, and let a drop fall on it. Instantly the residue became a beautiful purple, turning rapidly to violet, then to dark red and finally disappeared.

"Stramonium all right," he nodded with satisfaction. "That was known as Vitali's test. Yes, there was stramonium in those cigarettes—datura stramonium—perhaps a trace of hyocyamino. They are all, like atropine, mydriatic alkaloids, so-called from the effect on the eye. One one-hundred-thousandth of a grain will affect the cat's eye. You saw how it acted. It is more active than even atropine. Better yet, you remember how Don Luis's eyes looked."

"How about the Señora?" I put in.

"Oh," he answered quickly, "her pupils were normal enough. Didn't you notice that? This concentrated poison which has been used in Mendoza's cigarettes does not kill, at least not outright. It is worse. Slowly it accumulates in the system. It acts on the brain. Of all the dangers to be met with in superstitious countries, these mydriatic alkaloids are among the worst. They offer a chance for crimes of the most fiendish nature—worse than the gun or the stiletto, and with little fear of detection. It is the production of insanity!"

Horrible though the idea was I could not doubt it in the face of Craig's investigations and what I had already seen. In fact, it was necessary for me only to recall the peculiar sensations I myself had experienced after smoking merely a few puffs of one of Mendoza's cigarettes in order to be convinced of the possible effect of the insidious poison contained in the many that he smoked.

It was almost dawn before Craig and I left the laboratory after his discovery of the manner of the stramonium poisoning. I was thoroughly tired, though not so much so that my dreams were not haunted by a succession of baleful eyes peering at me from the darkness.

I slept late, but Kennedy was about early at the laboratory, verifying his experiments and checking over his results, carefully endeavoring to isolate any other of the closely related mydriatic alkaloids that might be contained in the noxious fumes of the poisoned tobacco. Though he was already convinced of what was going on, I knew that he considered it a matter of considerable medico-legal importance to be exact, for if the affair ever came to the stage of securing an indictment, the charge could be sustained only by specific proof.

Early in the forenoon Kennedy left me alone in the laboratory and made a trip downtown, where he visited a South American tobacco dealer and placed a rush order for a couple of hundred cigarettes, duplicating in shape and quality those which Señor Mendoza doza preferred, except, however, the deadly drug which was in those he was smoking.

I had some writing to do and was busily engaged at my typewriter when I suddenly became conscious of that feeling of being watched. Perhaps I had heard a footstep outside and did not remember it, but at any rate I had the feeling. I stopped tapping the keys suddenly and wheeled about in my chair just in time to catch a glimpse of a face dodging back from the window. I don't think that I would be prepared to swear just who it was, but there was just enough that was familiar about the fleeting glimpse of the eyes to make me feel uncomfortable.

I ran to the door, but it was too late. The intruder had disappeared. Still, the more I thought about it, the more determined I was to verify my suspicions, if possible. I put on my hat and walked over to the registrar's office. Sure enough, Alfonso de Moche was registered in the summer school as well as in the regular course. I was now fully convinced that it was he who had been watching us.