Tucked within the tobacco folds, in a small hollow space which was partially closed by the filler which had once been bitten together, was a powdery stuff that seemed comprised of small, hard particles, as of crystals, roughly broken up.
His breath came fast. His heart was pumping rapidly. He raised the cigar to his nostrils and smelled, but could only detect the pungent odor of tobacco.
That the powder was a poison he had not the slightest doubt. Aware that one poison only, thus administered, would have the potency to slay an adult human being practically on the instant, he realized at once that here, at the little, unimportant drug-shop of the place, the simple test for such a stuff could be made in a matter of two minutes.
Eager and feverish to inform himself without delay, he took out his knife and carefully removed all the powder from its place and wrapped it most cautiously about in the paper of the envelope in hand. The cigar he returned to his pocket.
Five minutes later, at the drug-store down the street, an obliging and clever young chemist at the place was holding up a test-tube made of glass, with perhaps two thimblefuls of acidulated solution which had first been formed by dissolving the powder under inspection.
"If this is what you suppose," he said, "a slight admixture of this iron will turn it Prussian blue."
He poured in the iron, which was likewise in solution, and instantly the azure tint was created in all its deadly beauty.
Garrison was watching excitedly.
"No mistake about it," said the chemist triumphantly. "Where did you find this poison?"
"Why—in a scrap of meat," said Garrison, inventing an answer with ready ingenuity; "enough to have killed my dog in half a shake!"