Ardsley evidently knew exactly where to go. Leaving the others, he moved across to one of the cases on the wall, opened it, and took down from a shelf a little pot of unbaked earthenware.
Arthur had followed him suspiciously.
“What’s that you’re doing?” he demanded, abruptly.
“The Chief Constable asked me to find this for him,” Ardsley replied, examining the material in the pot as he spoke.
“You’re not taking any of it, are you?”
Young Hawkhurst put the question with obvious distrust. He had his eyes fixed on the toxicologist’s hands, as though he feared that Ardsley might remove some of the stuff under their very eyes.
“No,” Ardsley retorted, with a certain sharpness in his tone. “I’ve nothing further to do with it.”
He handed the little vessel to Wendover as he spoke; and seemed to dissociate himself from any further connection with the matter. Arthur’s eyes fixed themselves on the pot. He was still, apparently, disturbed by the way things were going.
“I don’t care about this way of doing things,” he complained. “Here you come along. For all we know you’ve no authority whatever behind you. And you go straight to this stuff and want to take it away with you, by the look of it. I know what it is. It’s curare—Indian arrow-poison. And you propose calmly to walk off with it! We can’t have that sort of thing. It’s dangerous stuff. You’ve no right to take it: I object.”
Wendover tried to throw oil on the waters.