Weston sniffed hard at the glasses, but could detect no untoward odors, nor any sign of poison or drugs of any sort.
The small white cupboard on the wall showed only a few bottles containing toilet appurtenances and simple medicines.
"Witch Hazel, Peroxide, Talcum powder, Cholera mixture and soda mints," he said, from the various labels,—"hello, here's laudanum! How about that?"
"No," Doctor Middleton declared, "it wasn't laudanum poisoning. It was prussic acid. The effects are quite different, and there's no mistaking them. I don't know what the young men were doing with laudanum, but it wasn't that that killed Mr. Blair."
"Curious, to have poison around at all," said Shelby, musingly.
"Gives a hint of intended suicide," suggested Weston. "Though not necessarily——"
"I should say not!" broke in Benjamin Crane. "Gilbert Blair wasn't coward enough to take his own life for any reason. Why, he was my son's friend. It was an accident,—and the fact of finding that other poison about, points toward accident, to my mind."
"Just how do you make that out, Mr. Crane?" asked Weston, with a slight smile.
"Why"—began Crane, a little lamely—"I'm not sure that I can explain, but it appeared to me that if Blair had one poison in his possession, he might have had the other, and——"
"How do you know this laudanum was Mr. Blair's possession?" asked Weston. "Might it not have been Mr. Thorpe's?"