“There’ll not be a peep out of me, let alone a crow, till I know what’s doing, inspector, for Mac’s told me nothing except the look he saw on Hughes’ face,” Dennis replied, as he drew forward the shabby easy-chair and placed an ash-tray within reach. His homely, long face was set in lines of deep seriousness once more and the inspector’s, too, had sobered.
McCarty closed the door and taking a box of cigars from the mantel he held it out to the visitor.
“The autopsy’ll be over, I’m thinking.” He spoke carelessly enough but his breath labored with suppressed excitement. “What kind of poison was it, inspector?”
The inspector nodded slowly.
“I thought you had guessed! It was physostigmine, the medical examiner called it; powdered Calabar bean. It’s colorless, has no taste, and a single grain would be fatal in three hours or a little longer, but Hughes had taken a trifle more than a grain.”
“Holy saints!” gasped Dennis. “So ’twas murder, after all!”
An expression of honest gratification had stolen over McCarty’s face but he shook his head.
“Many kinds of beans I have heard of, including the Mexican ones that jump like a frog, but never the sort that bring death,” he said. “If one grain of it would kill in three or four hours, a little more would kill in two or maybe three, I suppose. It was around nine o’clock when Hughes fell there across from the station-house, so he must have taken that powdered bean before he left the Orbit house or right after, though we’ve not yet fixed the time he did leave. I wonder what would be the symptoms of that poison?”
“I asked the medical examiner,” the inspector responded. “Pain in the abdomen, nausea, then spasmodic respiration, numbness, and a complete paralysis of respiration, which of course would mean death. It doesn’t explain his staggering along so that Terry thought he was drunk—”
He paused and McCarty lighted his own cigar and drew contemplatively upon it before he spoke.