“It is true,” he began, without a trace of foreign accent. “I picked up the flask immediately afterwards, and had its contents tested on reaching Washington.”
Norcross faced them undauntedly. “Will you gentlemen, Americans all, take the word of a renegade Japanese, a lying treacherous murderer, against me, an American in good repute, a naturalist of some renown?” Silence answered him, and he continued more rapidly. “I was with Dr. Horace Shively during the whole time the train was in Atlanta—if you accuse me of the crime—you must accuse him also.”
“You were talking to Shively the whole time you were standing on the vestibule of the smoker, while he sat on the lower step with his back to you,” corrected Calhoun. “And while giving him a description of a South American trip, you, using your powers of ventriloquism to carry on your tale unbroken, which made him think you were still standing right behind him, slipped inside the open door of the smoker——”
“Wait,” interrupted Ito, seeing that Norcross was about to speak. “Tilghman was sitting right at the end of the car, but a step or two inside the open door.”
“And Tilghman obligingly permitted me to drop the oxalic acid inside the small mouthpiece of the flask,” broke in Norcross scornfully.
“No. You crept up behind him and dropped the powder into the wide silver cup of the flask, which Tilghman held in his hand, and out of which he was intermittently sipping brandy while sitting with his eyes closed.”
“Indeed? And why was I not seen doing all this by the people in the car on the next track?”
“Because the window shade was down,” was Ito’s prompt reply. “It was in the cup that the chemist found the dregs containing oxalic acid.”
“So!” Norcross smiled bitterly. “You have learned your lesson well from your master, Carter Calhoun,” and there was no mistaking the fury which blazed in the professor’s eyes as he turned on his chief accuser. “Your fantastic statement that I am a ventriloquist is without foundation and is a lie.”
For answer Calhoun took a worn magazine cutting from his pocket.