"As for Teresa de Leon, it was jealousy that impelled her to follow Jose Barrios from Cuba to New York. The murderer, in his scheming, knew it, saw a chance to use her, to encourage her, perhaps throw suspicion on her, if necessary. When I came uncomfortably close to him he even sent an anonymous telegram that might point toward her. It was sent by the same person who stole in Barrios's office and shot him with an asphyxiating pistol which discharged a fatal quantity of pure veratrine full at him.
"My love meter, in registering hidden emotions, supplements what the polarimeter tells me. It was the levo-rotary veratrine of the fatal death camas which you used, Page," concluded Craig, as again the electric attachment clicked shut the lock on the laboratory door.
VIII
THE VITAL PRINCIPLE
"That's the handwriting of a woman—a jealous woman," remarked Kennedy, handing to me a dainty note on plain paper which had come in the morning mail.
I did not stop to study the writing, for the contents of the letter were more fascinating than even Kennedy's new science of graphology.
You don't know me [the note read], but I know of your work of scientific investigation.
Let me inform you of something that ought to interest you.
In the Forum Apartments you will find that there is some strange disease affecting the Wardlaw family. It is a queer disease of the nerves. One is dead. Others are dying.
Look into it.