“No,” I said, nervously.
“It is a deadly and little-known drug,” he said, “which (so the chemist tells me) possesses the property that when vaporized the slightest whiff of it causes instant death if inhaled into the lungs. The tobacco in that tin had been doctored with it. I sent the chemist the pipe that poor Digby was smoking when he died, and he analyzed what was left in the bowl. There is no doubt whatever. He was poisoned in that way. I tell you, my professional duty as a literary agent requires that in my clients' interest I should sift this thing to the bottom. It may explain some of those earlier deaths that baffled the Authors' League.”
“But Mrs. Carboy, surely, did not smoke,” I was about to say; but I checked myself in time.
“Dove,” I said, “you are superb. But I wish you would tell me how you worked the thing out. What was it that first aroused your suspicions? If it had not been for you, I should never have guessed anything wrong.”
“Of course,” he said, grimly, “it was that murderous placard in the laundry window, and that is to your credit, for you noticed it. That was the one thing that made plain the whole complicated business. Naturally I suspected the tobacco from the first, for (as I told you) it was a mixture that Digby never smoked ordinarily. But when I heard that that eccentric and damnable placard had been put there at the suggestion of the tobacconist next door, and then found that the tobacconist was also a bookseller, I knew the worst. I have spent to-day in rounding up the threads, and I think I may say without vainglory that the miscreant is in my power.”
“But the man standing on one leg?” I said, puzzled. “What was he up to, and why did he run?” Dulcet's face shone with quiet triumph.
“I told you,” he said, “to look for a nervous man smoking Cartesian Mixture. That tobacconist, Basswood, smokes Cartesian. It is a very moist, sticky blend, as you know. It can only be shaken out of the pipe, after smoking, by vigorously knocking the bowl on something hard. Very well, and if there is no stone step or something of that sort handy, what will a smoker tap his pipe on? Why, he will stand on one leg and knock it out on the lifted heel of the other. And his running away when you addressed him so whimsically, wasn't that a pretty good sign of nervousness—and also of a guilty and doubtful spirit?”
He finished his tumbler of the near-beer that has made Milwaukee infamous, and leaned forward earnestly.
“You know very well,” he said, “that that laundryman would never have thought of his grotesque notice, addressed to 'Artists and Authors', if someone hadn't suggested it to him. Obviously he was only a gull. That card was intended as a decoy, to lure Digby away from his room, so that Basswood could leave the poisoned tobacco for him. Basswood had studied Digby's habits, and must have known that the notice about the collars would be sure to catch his eye. Now we had better be going. The police will be at Basswood's shop at eight o'clock.”
I could have done with a little strong coffee, but he haled me out of the restaurant, and we walked up Amsterdam Avenue. How little, I reflected, did the passersby, hurrying about their kindly and innocent concerns, suspect our dark and perilous errand.