Grover, as it moved toward the chair occupied by the ape, deftly caught its tail and swung an end around a chair leg.
“Shall I turn on the current?” he chuckled.
The animal became quiet, stopped.
Once only he tried to escape and when Potts made a move to obstruct the way Grover calmly waved him back.
“But he’s got the can, Grover!” Roger also stepped forward.
Grover actually grinned at them.
“Let him go,” Grover waved back Potts and Roger as the thing began to hop toward them and they made preparations to try to stop it.
“The Doctor,” went on Grover as the animal paused an instant, “to get Toby where his word would not be trusted, to remove him from the laboratory before he could take away the gem he knew about, planned his own poisoning this morning. He sent Toby for a drink, and by swallowing some quick-acting sedative, perhaps strong codein, or another of the poppy derivatives, he seemed to be poisoned. To make it appear like strychnine or some other—wait! I’ll venture to assert that in the other room Roger will find the shell of some pit such as you crack in a peach and extract a tiny kernel. Those inner kernels of a peach pit, chewed up, would leave on his breath just the same odor as a very dangerous poison which I shan’t name.”
Later that was verified. Roger found the cracked peach pit.
“It was easy to ‘recover’ and come here tonight,” Grover ended.