“That is quite true,” I answered, examining it with my pocket lens, which I always carry. “I see the difference. But how did you detect it?”
“From his face, partly; but partly, too, from the needle itself. I had my suspicions, and I was watching him closely. Just as he raised the thing in his hand, half concealing it, so, and showing only the point, I caught the blue gleam of the steel as the light glanced off it. It was not the kind I knew. Then I withdrew my hand at once, feeling sure he meant mischief.”
“That was wonderfully quick of you!”
“Quick? Well, yes. Thank Heaven, my mind works fast; my perceptions are rapid. Otherwise—” she looked grave. “One second more, and it would have been too late. The man might have killed me.”
“You think it is poisoned, then?”
Hilda shook her head with confident dissent. “Poisoned? Oh, no. He is wiser now. Fifteen years ago, he used poison. But science has made gigantic strides since then. He would not needlessly expose himself to-day to the risks of the poisoner.”
“Fifteen years ago he used poison?”
She nodded, with the air of one who knows. “I am not speaking at random,” she answered. “I say what I know. Some day I will explain. For the present, it is enough to tell you I know it.”
“And what do you suspect now?” I asked, the weird sense of her strange power deepening on me every second.
She held up the incriminated needle again.