"Not exclusively, but at times, yes."
"How was the stuff administered?"
"I think in a fifteen-cent cigar." Garrison was watching him closely while apparently toying with a pen.
"Very good," said Wicks with an air of satisfaction that was not exactly understandable. "I presume you have something to go on—something by way of evidence?"
"No," said Garrison, "unfortunately I have not. I had a second cigar which I believe was prepared with the poison, but I committed the blunder of losing it somewhere—Heaven alone knows where."
"That's devilish poor business!" cried Wicks in apparent exasperation. "But you haven't said why you believe the man got the poison in any such manner. On what do you base your conclusions?"
"Near where the man was found dead I discovered an unsmoked cigar," answered Garrison, watching the effect of his words. "It contained what little of the powder the victim had not absorbed."
Wicks looked at him almost calmly.
"You've done good work," he said. "It's a pity you lost that second cigar. And, by the way, where did you get it?"
Garrison realized that, despite his intended precautions, he had gone irretrievably into disclosures that were fetching the case up to Dorothy or young Foster Durgin. In his eagerness to pursue a new theory, he had permitted Wicks to draw him farther than he had ever intended to go. There was no escape. He decided to put it through.