"Binjoy," pursued Louis, "was always lamenting that I was not the owner of the Fellenger estates; and now that I am he hopes to make me pay him large sums of money to purchase his silence."
"What does he threaten to accuse you of?" said Fanks.
"Of murdering my cousin under the disguise of the negro Caesar, but I am innocent, Mr. Fanks, as I hope to prove to you. I was trapped by that man and his accomplice, Dr. Turnor."
"Ah!" murmured Fanks, while Binjoy scowled. "I was sure that the ferret had something to do with the matter."
"Of that you shall judge for yourself," said Fellenger. "Have you heard of Mithridates, Mr. Fanks?"
The detective was rather astonished at this apparently irrelevant question; but having some knowledge of ancient history, he said that he had heard of the monarch. "He was a king of Pontus, wasn't he; who lived on poisons?"
"Exactly. He accustomed himself to taking poisons for so long that in the end the most deadly had no effect on him. I always thought that this was a fable and I wanted to see if I was right. For this purpose, I tried experiments on dogs. I inoculated an animal with a weak poison, and gradually increased the dose. Whether I was successful does not matter; it has nothing to do with my story. But I may tell you this, that, with the aid of Binjoy, I prepared a very powerful vegetable poison for my final experiment; with this I impregnated a needle."
"Oh!" said Fanks, "now I am beginning to see. Was it an ordinary needle?"
"No, it was not an ordinary needle," replied Fellenger. "In the first place it was silver; in the second, it was hollow; in the third, it was filled with this deadly vegetable poison, of which I told you."
"Prepared by Dr. Binjoy?"