“You’d rather stay here, I should think, Wendover. You dislike vivisection. I’m only going to put a needle into the little beast—quite painless; but you needn’t come and get your feelings rasped.”
It was phrased politely enough; but it was quite evident from the way in which it was said that Ardsley had no desire to let Wendover into his laboratory. Leaving the Squire to kick his heels, the toxicologist led Sir Clinton through the house to the research department.
“We’d better see exactly what phenomena the poison produces, first of all. I’ll get the guinea-pig.”
He washed some of the poison from the dart with liquid, and introduced the solution into a hypodermic syringe, by means of which he injected a minute amount of the fluid under the guinea-pig’s skin.
“Dead already?” Sir Clinton asked in some astonishment. “It’s like a thunderbolt.”
Ardsley had been experimenting on the animal and watching closely. His face showed that he had found something definite.
“I think I can make a guess,” he said. “It happens to be something with which I’m fairly familiar. Let’s confirm it.”
He made another extraction of the poison which he placed in a test-tube. To this he added a few drops of solution from a bottle which he took down from a shelf.
“Sulphovanadic acid,” he explained. “Just watch.”
On the addition of the reagent, the liquid in the test-tube turned black.