Horace scowled. "How do you come into the matter?" he growled.
"Into what matter?" queried the other.
"Oliver Lanwin's murder. It's in all the papers."
"Quite so; but why should my remark about the Sacred Herb make you think that I referred to Lanwin's murder?"
"Is there any need of an explanation?" asked Horace coolly. "If you didn't guess, as I did, that the Sacred Herb was used to make that smoke, why do you talk of the matter at all?"
"Then you think that the herb——"
"Course! Course!" growled Horace, beginning to rock again. "Lanwin haunted the South Seas. I knew him there. He must have got the herb from Easter Island, as it is the only place it grows in. When I read the girl's yarn of the smoke, I guessed straight off that Lanwin had been trying to induce a trance with the burning herb."
"Do you think that Miss Chent murdered him?"
"No! The library was filled with the smoke of the herb. Anyone not used to the fumes would go down like a shot, as she did."
"Then you believe Miss Chent's story?" asked Prelice eagerly.