Gold of the Gods Part 24

"A cat?" I repeated.

"Yes, a cat--felis domesticus, if it sounds better that way--a plain, ordinary cat."

I jammed on my hat and, late as it was, sallied forth on this apparently ridiculous mission.

Several belated pa.s.sers-by and a policeman watched me as though I were a house-breaker, and I felt like a fool, but at last, by perseverance and tact, I managed to capture a fairly good specimen of the species, and carried it in my arms to the laboratory with some profanity and many scratches.

XV

THE WEED OF MADNESS

In my absence Craig had set to work on a peculiar apparatus, as though he were distilling something from several of the cigarette stubs which he had been studying by means of the interferometer.

"Here's your confounded cat," I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, as I placed the unhappy feline in a basket and waited patiently until finally he seemed to be rewarded for his patient labours. It was well along toward morning when he obtained in a test-tube a few drops of a colourless, odourless liquid.

"My interferometer gave me a clue," he remarked, as he held the tube up with satisfaction. "Without the tell-tale line in the spectrum which I was able to discover by its use I might have been hunting yet for it.

It is so rare that no one would ever have thought, offhand, I suppose, to look for it. But here it is, I'm sure, only I wanted to be able to test it."

"So you are not going to try it on yourself," I said sarcastically, referring to his last experiment with a poison. "This time you are going to make the cat the dog."

"The cat will be better to test it on than a human being," he replied, with a glance that made me wince, for, after his performance with the curare, I felt that once the scientific furore was on him I might be called upon to become an unwilling martyr to science.

It was with an air of relief, both for himself and my own peace and safety, that I saw him take the cat out of the basket and hold her in his arms, smoothing her fur gently, to quiet the feelings that I had severely ruffled.

Then with a dropper he sucked up a bit of the liquid from the test-tube. I watched him intently as he let a small drop fall into the eye of the cat.

The cat blinked a moment, and I bent over to observe it more closely.

"It won't hurt the cat," he explained, "and it may help us."

As I looked at the cat's eye it seemed to enlarge, even under the glare of a light, s.h.i.+ning forth, as it were, like the proverbial cat's eye under a bed.

What did it mean?

Was there such a thing, I wondered hastily, as the drug of the evil eye?

"What have you found?" I queried.

"Something very much like the so-called 'weed of madness,' I think," he replied slowly.

"The weed of madness?" I repeated.

"Yes. It is similar to the Mexican toloache and the Hindu datura, which you must have heard about."

I had heard of these weird drugs, but they had always seemed to be so far away and to belong rather to the atmosphere of civilizations different from New York. Yet, I reflected, what was to prevent the appearance of anything in such a cosmopolitan city, especially in a case so unusual as that which had so far baffled even Kennedy's skill?

"You know the jimson weed--the Jamestown weed, as it is so often called?" he continued, explaining. "It grows almost everywhere in the world, but most thrivingly in the tropics. All the poisons that I have mentioned are related to it in some way, I believe."

"I've seen the thing in lots and fields," I replied, "but I never thought it was of much importance."

"Well," he resumed, "the jimson weed on the Pacific coast, in some parts of the Andes, has large white flowers which exhale a faint, repulsive odour. It is a harmless-looking plant, with its thick tangle of leaves, a coa.r.s.e green growth, with trumpet-shaped flowers. But to one who knows its properties it is quite too dangerously convenient for safety."

"But what has that to do with the evil eye?" I asked.

"Nothing; but it has much to do with the cigarettes that Whitney is smoking," he went on positively. "Those cigarettes have been doped!"

"Doped?" I interrogated, in surprise. "With this weed of madness, as you call it?"

"No, it isn't toloache that was used," he corrected. "I think it must be some particularly virulent variety of the jimson weed that was used, though that same weed in Mexico is, I am sure, what there they call toloache. Perhaps its virulence in this case lies in the method of concentration in preparing it. For instance, the seeds of the stramonium, which is the same thing, contain a much higher percentage of poison than the leaves and flowers. Perhaps the seeds were used. I can't say. But, then, that isn't at all necessary. It is the fact of its use that concerns us most now."

He took a drop of the liquid which he had isolated and added a drop of nitric acid. Then he evaporated it by gentle heat and it left a residue slightly yellow.

Next he took from the shelf over his table a bottle marked "Alcoholic Solution--Pota.s.sium Hydrate." He opened it and let a drop fall on the place where the liquid had evaporated.

Instantly the residue became a beautiful purple, turning rapidly to violet, then to dark red, and, finally, it disappeared altogether.

"Stramonium, all right," he nodded, with satisfaction at the achievement of his night's labours. "That was known as Vitali's test.

Yes, there was stramonium in those cigarettes--datura stramonium--perhaps a trace of hyoscyamine."

I tried to look wise, but all I could think of was that, whatever his science showed me now, my instinct had been enough to prompt me not to smoke those cigarettes, though, of course, only Kennedy's science could tell what it was that caused that instinctive aversion.

"They are all like atropine, mydriatic alkaloids," he proceeded, "so called from the effect they have on the eye. Why, one-one hundred thousandth of a grain will affect the eye of a cat. You saw how it acted on our subject. It is more active in that way than atropine.

Better yet, you remember how Whitney's eyes looked, how Inez said her father stared, and how she feared for Lockwood?"

"I remember," I said, still not able to detach the evil-eye idea quite from my mind. "How about the Senora's eyes? What makes them so--well, effective?"

"Oh," Craig answered quickly, "her pupils were normal enough. Didn't you notice that? It was the difference in Whitney's and the others'

that first suggested making some tests."

"What is the effect?" I asked, wondering whether it might have contributed to the cause of Mendoza's death.

"The concentrated poison which has been used in these cigarettes does not kill--at least not outright. It is worse than that. Slowly it acc.u.mulates in the system. It acts on the brain."

I was listening, spellbound, as he made his disclosure. No wonder, I thought, even a scientific criminal stood in awe of Craig.

"Of all the dangers to be met with in superst.i.tious countries, these mydratic alkaloids are among the worst. They offer a chance for crimes of the most fiendish nature--worse than with the gun or the stiletto.

They are worse because there is so little fear of detection. That crime is the production of insanity!"

Horrible though the idea, and repulsive, I could not doubt it in the face of Craig's investigations and what I had already seen with my own eyes. In fact, it was necessary for me only to recall the mild sensations I myself had experienced, in order to be convinced of the possible effect intended by the insidious poison contained in the many cigarettes which Whitney, for instance, had smoked.

"But don't you suppose they know it?" I wondered. "Can't they tell it?"

"I suppose they have gradually become accustomed to it," Craig ventured. "If you have ever smoked one particular brand of cigarette you must have noticed how the manufacturer can gradually subst.i.tute a cheaper grade of tobacco without any large number of his patrons knowing anything about it. I imagine it might have been done in some way like that."