“He hired a lot of thugs and dope runners in the big city, sir. And he’s been importing big lots of cocaine from Europe. The old hotel up to Mizzentop was bought and fitted up as a kind of laboratory-factory, and the dope was stored up there. That house he blew up was where the factory super and some of his head men stayed. Professor Fanely, of course you know, is terrible wealthy. For years he’s been what they call a great phil—philan—”
“You mean philanthropist, I take it?”
“That’s it—couldn’t think of it for a minute, sir. Well,—his speciality is canned goods. He spends millions every year on ’em. Has ’em distributed to the poor and the near poor all over the United States. Even his friends get big cases of canned goods from him at Christmas time. It’s his hobby—he’s known the country over for it.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about it,” said Osceola, “I remember his yen for giving away canned goods. He even sent down a large shipment to my Seminoles in Florida last winter. I ate some of the stuff myself, and wrote him a letter of thanks. But what do his canned goods have to do with the cocaine smuggling?”
“Why, the Professor has made a solution of the stuff, that he says is impossible to detect.”
“Detect—in what?”
Unconsciously Ashton Sanborn and Bill moved to a position just outside the screen door.
“Detect in the canned goods,” Number 13 explained. “That stuff is concentrated at Mizzentop. Every can has a very small hole bored in the top, and the solution is squirted into the soup or fruit or whatever’s in the can, by a small syringe. This little bit of a hole—it’s just big enough to push the needle through—is closed up again. It’s all done by machinery that’s been installed in the old hotel at Mizzentop.”
“Great guns!” ejaculated the young Chief in horror. “Why, that will make dope fiends of thousands, perhaps millions of men, women and children!”
“That’s the Professor’s idea, sir. They’ll get the cocaine habit and never know how they done it. Professor Fanely says it’s the best way he knows of for getting even with a country that won’t have him for President. When I was up there yesterday, I seen a case of goods addressed to the White House. If he’s given enough time, he boasts he’ll have everybody in the United States, from the chief executive in Washington down, eating his free canned goods.”