'But instinct has a basis in reason.'
'Has it? I am not enough of a psychologist to answer that question.
Tell me why you are asking me all this.'
'Because I am afraid to tell you what is in my mind. Do you remember what Merril said?'
'Yes,' I replied; 'he said that according to symptoms my friend had been poisoned. But he didn't see how it could possibly be, and he said that the case was completely beyond him.'
'Exactly. When I went into that room, I of course had your words in my mind. India has a hundred poisons unknown to the West, many of them are subtle, almost undiscoverable. I called to my mind what I had learned in India, what I had seen and done there. Frankly, I don't understand your friend's case. Had it been in India, I should have understood it, and what was possible, ay, what would have amounted to certainty there, was utterly impossible in England—at least, so it seemed to me. But I acted on the assumption that I was in India.'
'You mean that you injected an antidote for a poison that you know of?' I ventured.
He looked at me steadily for a few seconds, but he did not speak.
'Now look here, Luscombe,' he said, after a long silence, 'I hesitated to tell you this, because it is a serious business.'
I nodded.
'You see,' he went on, 'we are not in the realm of proof. But as sure as I am a living man, if your friend was poisoned, some one poisoned him, unless he had a curious way of trying to commit suicide.'