“Yes, sir, the same as here,” he replied. “Mr. Orbit, you’ve that chloroform bottle? The inspector says ’twas found on a stand beside your bed.”
“Ching Lee has it, I believe; would you like to see it?” He rang the bell without waiting for a reply. “The cloth used was a towel from my own bathroom; it’s evident that the fellow was familiar with the house and knew his way about; but how he got in that side door leading from the card-room, if Ching Lee really bolted it as usual the night before—? Oh, Ching Lee?”
The butler had appeared silently in the doorway and now Orbit addressed him in a rapid patter of Chinese. Ching Lee, as impassive and wooden of countenance now as before the tragedy, bowed and departed, and McCarty turned once more to Orbit.
“What time was it, as near as you can figure, that you were doped?”
“I should say, around two o’clock in the morning, perhaps a trifle before. Sir Philip and I sat up till after midnight playing chess, and when I retired I tried for more than an hour to sleep before I took a bromide. Things grew hazy after that and I don’t know how long I dozed before I was conscious of some one in the room.”
“You got no whiff of anything else before the chloroform hit you?” McCarty asked. “No smell of a pipe or cigar if the guy was a smoker, maybe?”
“I smoke so constantly myself that I would scarcely have noticed it even if there had been time and I were fully awake.” Orbit raised his brows. “You smoke yourself, McCarty; could you have detected it?”
“Sure,” McCarty stated the fact modestly. “I’ve not the nose Denny has, but ’tis easy to tell the smell of a cigar from a pipe, even if it’s only hanging about the clothes of a person; a rich, full-flavored cigar with a body to it leaves a scent that a man will travel with, whether he gets it himself or not.”
“‘Denny?’” Orbit repeated. “Oh, you mean your associate, Riordan? Yes, I remember he detected the odor of that small blaze here a week ago, when the monkey upset the cigar lighter in my room. Odd faculty, that, eh, Sir Philip?”
“Jolly, I fancy. I only wish I had it!” Sir Philip chuckled. “My man makes away with my cigars at a shockin’ rate but I never can catch him at it. I say, no one’s disturbed our board, have they?”