The detective was kept busy at the Ritsky apartment until nearly ten o’clock. After stopping at a restaurant for a bit of breakfast and a cup of coffee, he went directly to the doctor’s home.
He found the psychologist in his laboratory, engrossed in a complicated chemical experiment. He shook a test tube, which he had been heating over a small alcohol lamp, held it up to the light, stood it in a small rack in which were a number of others partly filled with liquid, and nodded cordially to his friend.
“Morning, Doc.,” greeted Hoyne. “Have you doped out what we are going to tell the coroner yet?”
“I knew the direct cause of Ritsky’s death long ago. It was fear. The indirect cause, the thing that induced the fear, required careful examination and considerable chemical research.”
“And it was—”
“Psychoplasm.”
“I don’t get you, Doc. What is psychoplasm?”
“No doubt you have heard of the substance called ectoplasm, regarding which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has delivered numerous lectures, or an identical substance called teleplasm, discovered by Baron Von Schrenck Notzing while attending materialization seances with the medium known as Eva.
“While the baron was observing and photographing this substance in Europe, my friend and colleague, Professor James Braddock, was conducting similar investigations in this country. He named the substance psychoplasm, and I like the name better than either of the other two, as it is undoubtedly created or generated from invisible particles of matter through the power of the subjective mind.
“I have examined and analyzed many samples of this substance in the past. The plate I now have under the compound microscope, and the different chemical determinations I have just completed, show conclusively that this is psychoplasm.”