Half an hour later, Kamiroff was rubbing his chin with a forefinger, deep in concentration. "It sounds wild," he said at last, "but I've heard of wild things before."
"But what caused it?"
"Do you remember what you did last night? I mean the night of the first?"
"Not clearly; we got pretty crocked, I remember."
Kamiroff grinned. "I think you were a few up on me. Do you remember that bottle of white powder I had in the lab down in the basement?"
"No," Bethelman admitted.
"It was diazotimoline, one of the drugs we've been using in cancer research on white mice. That whole family of compounds has some pretty peculiar properties. This one happens to smell like vanilla; when I let you smell it, you stuck your finger in it and licked off some of the powder before I could stop you.
"It didn't bother me much; we've given it to mice without any ill effects, so I didn't give you an emetic or anything."
The bromo had made Bethelman's head feel better. "But what happened, exactly?" he asked.