“Grab it!” McCarty hastily thrust the documents he had been examining into his pockets and closed the filing case. “Grab all the notes and come along; we’ll need look no further in this house!”
Yet on the way to the door he paused and ran the pin-point of light along the rows of books in their towering cases. They appeared to be volumes of reference on widely diversified subjects, from hygiene and sanitation to law and religion; all were arranged in meticulous order, save on a lower shelf where the huge tomes of an encyclopædia had been stacked helter-skelter. One volume, that labeled: “Bronze—Cephalaspis,” protruded from the row as though too hastily replaced and McCarty stooped on a sudden impulse and drew it out. The morocco covers fell apart and the book opened midway, where a thin, silvery, leaf-shaped object had been inserted as a mark.
At a muttered injunction Dennis held his light trained upon it and McCarty’s eyes traveled down the page then stopped and for a long minute there was no sound except their mingled breaths. Then the latter whispered:
“Listen, Denny; here’s a queer one!—‘It is used in the form of an emulsion by the natives of Africa, as an ordeal when persons are suspected of witchcraft. It is believed that if the suspect vomits it he is innocent; if it is retained and death occurs, he is guilty.’”
“A mighty sensible arrangement, considering!” Dennis commented. “If he’s guilty, and I’d not put witchcraft past them heathen, they’re saved the bother and expense of an execution!... But what in the name of common sense has it got to do with what’s been going on here in the Mall?”
“Nothing.” McCarty tore out the page, wrapped it about the leaf-like bookmark and pocketed it. “Nothing whatever, except that the stuff they make the suspects take is Calabar bean!”
He replaced the mutilated volume and they stole from the room, making their way down the stairs and back to the open window, through which they had entered. The silence was unbroken and when they had crawled through the aperture and out into the wind-swept court McCarty leaned against the wall balancing himself precariously on one foot as he drew on a shoe, while Dennis softly closed the window.
“We’ll not be breaking into Orbit’s?” the latter asked, as he followed his companion’s example. “Them notes about poison gas, the marked page telling of Calabar bean, and the life history of the crooks he surrounds himself with—if Benjamin Parsons isn’t the man we’re looking for I’ll eat my hat!”
“Then maybe you’d better be working up an appetite against the future!” suggested McCarty dryly. “There’s no more proof against him than there was against that Otto Lindholm and if the lights are out over at Orbit’s I’m going to take a chance!”
The miniature palace across the way was in total darkness, but its marble front gleamed whitely in the faint glimmer of starlight before a wind-driven cloud obscured them again. Once more escaping the vigilance of the night watchman they crossed the street and passed down the opening next to the Goddard house where the glow from all the upper windows bore mute testimony once more to the sustained anxiety and heartbreaking suspense within.