"Well, I think he was looking for something in the cigarettes—and—he found it."
"What do you mean?" asked Dr. Warren.
"Wait. Maybe I can show you."
Colonel Ashley carefully gathered up all the cigarettes in the cell, a number of them being perfect. With them, and the black butts, as well as the broken paper tubes, he moved over to the small table in the cell, and spread them out.
Donovan reached under the colonel's arm and broke open one of the whole cigarettes. "I don't see—" he began. "For the love of Mike look at this!" he suddenly exclaimed. "There's a needle in this dope stick!"
"And, if you value your life don't touch it!" cried the colonel. "That's what I was looking for! Don't so much as scratch yourself the hundredth part of an inch or— Well, you saw Singa Phut," he ended grimly.
"Poisoned needle, Colonel?" asked Dr. Warren, as he shoved the cigarette Donovan had broken toward the middle of the table.
"That's what I suspect. If we had a cat now or a rat—"
"Easy enough to get a rat," interposed the warden. "There's always some of the beasts in the traps we set about. We catch 'em alive. I don't like poison. Here, Riley, go and see if you can find a rat in one of the traps. What you going to do, Colonel? Try it on him?"
"If you have one, yes. You get my idea, I guess. Some one of Singa Phut's Indian friends, knowing he would rather go out this way than pay the penalty of his crime, brought in a package of his favorite cigarettes.