“You positively frighten me!” The man had got a grip on himself, and he retorted with biting irony. “If, by any chance, I myself were the Bishop, I’d be inclined to admit defeat. . . . Still, it’s quite obvious that it was the Bishop who took the chessman to Mrs. Drukker at midnight; and I didn’t return home with Belle until half past twelve that night.”
“So you informed her. As I recall, you looked at your watch and told her what time it was.—Come, now: what time was it?”
“That’s correct—half past twelve.”
Vance sighed and tapped the ash from his cigarette.
“I say, Mr. Arnesson; how good a chemist are you?”
“One of the best,” the man grinned. “Majored in it.—What then?”
“When I was searching the attic this morning I discovered a little wall-closet in which some one had been distilling hydrocyanic acid from potassium ferrocyanide. There was a chemist’s gas-mask on hand, and all the paraphernalia. Bitter-almond odor still lurking in the vicinity.”
“Quite a treasure-trove, our attic. A sort of haunt of Loki, it would seem.”
“It was just that,” returned Vance gravely, “—the den of an evil spirit.”
“Or else the laboratory of a modern Doctor Faustus. . . . But why the cyanide, do you think?”