Now, as a matter of fact, I had no part in the affair of the opal button; for on the very next day following our meeting with Estes I came down with typhoid and spent the next two months in the hospital. I saw little of Indiman during that time, but his seeming neglect was fully explained by the story he told me the night I was well enough to get back to 4020 Madison Avenue.
"You remember, of course," began Indiman, "that I went off with Estes that May evening with just an apology to you about a family affair. Really, I knew nothing; but the boy's manner struck me as peculiar, and, while the incident of the opal button was trifling in itself, I was sure that there was something behind it. But when I plumped the question squarely at Estes he had nothing to say except that the jewel had been slipped into his hand while he stood looking into a shop-window. Where it came from he did not know; what it meant he either could not or would not tell. So I had to drop the subject for the time. But it came up again of its own accord four days later, the exact date being May 15th. So much by way of preamble; the story proper I will read from my notes.
"'De Quincey was right, and murder should be a fine art. But the Borgias—only amateurs! The far-famed Aqua Tofana—pooh! Any chemist will put it up for ten cents. Only be careful how you use it. Chemical analysis has advanced somewhat since the day of the divine Lucrezia, and a jury would convict without leaving their seats.'
"'Rather rough on your business, I should think,' said Estes, speaking somewhat thickly, for the port had stopped with him overfrequently of late. 'Is poisoning really out of date?' he continued.
"'As absolutely as crinoline and the novels of G. P. R. James,' answered our host, lightly. But I, who was watching him closely, saw his eyes harden. Estes had said more than one imprudent thing that evening, and this time he had gone too far. I would have to get the boy away somehow.
"There were three of us dining with Balencourt that evening at his chambers in the Argyle—Estes, Crawfurd, and myself; and as usual we had had an excellent dinner, for Balencourt knew how to live. Who was Balencourt? Well, nobody could answer that precisely, but his letters of introduction had been unexceptionable and his checks were always honored at Brown Brothers. Moreover, Crawfurd had met him frequently at the Jockey Club in Paris, and there was his name on White's books for any one to read. A man of forty-five perhaps, clean-shaven, well set up, an inveterate globe-trotter, a prince among raconteurs, and the most astounding polyglot I have ever met. I myself have heard him talk Eskimo with one of Peary's natives, and he had collated some of his researches into Iranic-Turanian root-forms for the Philological Society. But let us go back to our walnuts.
"Crawfurd picked up the thread. 'Then the science of assassination is a lost art,' he said, tentatively.
"'Oh, I did not say that,' replied Balencourt, carelessly. 'There are other ways—better ones.'
"'You mean beyond the risk of detection?'
"'Perfectly.'