“Because I never heard of anything like it. Aconitine isn’t used to put animals out of misery — nothing like that. And the capsule wasn’t any kind — chemically speaking—
manufactured here. Different base. The gelatin part, I mean. Another thing: It isn’t a little item anybody would whip up to poison somebody else.”
“No?” Higgins sounded skeptical. “Why?”
“You couldn’t feed it secretly to anybody. Too big. They’d see it or else feel it and not swallow it. And you wouldn’t want to try to bust it over somebody’s soup. Skin’s tough.
It would splash and spurt all around.”
“I see. Well, that’s good work, Ed.”
“Only thing it could be, Hig, I figure, is something I’ve only read about.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, if you were a foreign agent in somebody else’s country, for instance, and you thought you might be nabbed at any point and you wanted to be sure you’d never talk, you’d carry around, something about like that. Taped to you someplace. In a crisis, you could pop it in your mouth, bite, swallow — and quick curtains.”
Higgins said, “Thanks, Ed. Keep it to yourself.”