“I am entirely with you, Miller,” Thorndyke agreed. “It is a most remarkable circumstance.”
“And you see my point,” said Miller. “Every discovery turns out a sell. I find a concealed packet of powder—with the owner lying like Ananias—but the powder turns out not to be arsenic. I find a bottle that did contain arsenic, and there is no owner. I find another, similar bottle, which has an owner, and there is no arsenic in it. Rum, isn’t it? I feel like the donkey with the bunch of carrots tied to his nose. The carrots are there all right, but he can never get a bite at ’em.”
Thorndyke had listened with the closest attention to the superintendent’s observations and he now began a cautious cross-examination—cautious because Miller was taking it for granted that I had told him all about the search; and I could not but admire his discretion in suppressing the fact that I had not. For, while Thorndyke, himself, would not suspect me of any intentional concealment, Miller undoubtedly would, and what little confidence he had in me would have been destroyed. Accordingly, he managed the superintendent so adroitly that the latter described, piecemeal, all the incidents of the search.
“Did Wallingford say how he came to be in possession of all this cocaine and morphine?” he asked.
“No,” replied Miller. “I asked him, but he refused to say where he had got it.”
“But he could be made to answer,” said Thorndyke. “Both of these drugs are poisons. He could be made to account for having them in his possession and could be called upon to show that he came by them lawfully. They are not ordinarily purchasable by the public.”
“No, that’s true,” Miller admitted. “But is there any object in going into the question? You see, the cocaine isn’t really any affair of ours.”
“It doesn’t seem to be,” Thorndyke agreed, “at least, not directly; but indirectly it may be of considerable importance. I think you ought to find out where he got that cocaine and morphine, Miller.”
The superintendent reflected with the air of having seen a new light.
“I see what you mean, Doctor,” said he. “You mean that if he got the stuff from some Chinaman or common dope merchant, there wouldn’t be much in it; whereas, if he got it from some one who had a general stock of drugs, there might be a good deal in it. Is that the point?”