“I’ve got it, thanks.” Bob popped a tablet into his mouth, made a wry face, screwed the cover on the bottle again and tossed it back. “Nasty tasting things, aren’t they?” he asked.
“You get used to them after awhile,” replied Martin consolingly. “I guess I’ve eaten twenty of them today. When you have blood trans—whatever it is, Bob, how do you do it? I mean, where do you get the blood?”
“Advertise, I think. It isn’t easy, of course, because the other fellow, the one who gives the new blood, has to be pretty healthy. Lots of times you can’t find anyone and it’s no use.”
“What happens then?” inquired Martin uneasily.
Bob shrugged. “The patient dies, of course. You hear of it very often.”
Martin gulped and almost swallowed his tablet. “Gee! I guess I’d find someone if I had to,” he said. “Maybe, though, it’s more imagination than anything with me. You know you can imagine all sorts of things, and I guess onions wouldn’t be very hard, eh?”
“N—no,” said Joe, “but I have a hunch that your theory is about right, Mart. It certainly sounds mighty reasonable to me.”
“I don’t see how you make that out,” replied Martin shortly. “If it was really a case of—of being poisoned I guess I’d be a lot worse now than I am. It’s been going on two days, and anyone knows that poison acts pretty quick.”
“Some poisons,” answered Bob significantly. “But there are others that act—er—very slowly. There’s hemp, for instance.”