The War Terror Part 49

"Then, too, such burns are most often something more than superficial, for considerable heat is developed which leads to ma.s.sive destruction and carbonization of the tissues to a considerable depth. I have seen actual losses of substance--a lump of killed flesh surrounded by healthy tissues. Besides, such burns show an unexpected indolence when compared to the violent pains of ordinary burns. Perhaps that is due to the destruction of the nerve endings. How did Minturn die? Was he alone? Was he dead when he was discovered?"

"He was alone," replied Josephson, slowly endeavoring to tell it exactly as he had seen it, "but that's the strange part of it. He seemed to be suffering from a convulsion. I think he complained at first of a feeling of tightness of his throat and a twitching of the muscles of his hands and feet. Anyhow, he called for help. I was up here and we rushed in. Dr. Gunther had just brought him and then had gone away, after introducing him, and showing him the bath."

Josephson proceeded slowly, evidently having been warned that anything he said might be used against him. "We carried him, when he was this way, into this very room. But it was only for a short time. Then came a violent convulsion. It seemed to extend rapidly all over his body. His legs were rigid, his feet bent, his head back. Why, he was resting only on his heels and the back of his head. You see, Mr. Kennedy, that simply could not be the electric shock."

"Hardly," commented Kennedy, looking again at the body. "It looks more like a teta.n.u.s convulsion. Yet there does not seem to be any trace of a recent wound that might have caused lockjaw. How did he look?"

"Oh, his face finally became livid," replied Josephson. "He had a ghastly, grinning expression, his eyes were wide, there was foam on his mouth, and his breathing was difficult."

"Not like teta.n.u.s, either," revised Craig. "There the convulsion usually begins with the face and progresses to the other muscles. Here it seems to have gone the other way."

"That lasted a minute or so," resumed the ma.s.seur. "Then he sank back--perfectly limp. I thought he was dead. But he was not. A cold sweat broke out all over him and he was as if in a deep sleep."

"What did you do?" prompted Kennedy.

"I didn't know what to do. I called an ambulance. But the moment the door opened, his body seemed to stiffen again. He had one other convulsion--and when he grew limp he was dead."

CHAPTER XXIX

THE LEAD POISONER

It was a gruesome recital and I was glad to leave the baths finally with Kennedy. Josephson was quite evidently relieved at the att.i.tude Craig had taken toward the coroner's conclusion that Minturn had been shocked to death. As far as I could see, however, it added to rather than cleared up the mystery.

Craig went directly uptown to his laboratory, in contrast with our journey down, in abstracted silence, which was his manner when he was trying to reason out some particularly knotty problem.

As Kennedy placed the white crystals which he had sc.r.a.ped off the electrodes of the tub on a piece of dark paper in the laboratory, he wet the tip of his finger and touched just the minutest grain to his tongue.

The look on his face told me that something unexpected had happened. He held a similar minute speck of the powder out to me.

It was an intensely bitter taste and very persistent, for even after we had rinsed out our mouths it seemed to remain, clinging persistently to the tongue.

He placed some of the grains in some pure water. They dissolved only slightly, if at all. But in a tube in which he mixed a little ether and chloroform they dissolved fairly readily.

Next, without a word, he poured just a drop of strong sulphuric acid on the crystals. There was not a change in them.

Quickly he reached up into the rack and took down a bottle labeled "Pota.s.sium b.i.+.c.hromate."

"Let us see what an oxidizing agent will do," he remarked.

As he gently added the b.i.+.c.hromate, there came a most marvelous, kaleidoscopic change. From being almost colorless, the crystals turned instantly to a deep blue, then rapidly to purple, lilac, red, and then the red slowly faded away and they became colorless again.

"What is it?" I asked, fascinated. "Lead?"

"N-no," he replied, the lines of his forehead deepening. "No. This is sulphate of strychnine."

"Sulphate of strychnine?" I repeated in astonishment.

"Yes," he reiterated slowly. "I might have suspected that from the convulsions, particularly when Josephson said that the noise and excitement of the arrival of the ambulance brought on the fatal paroxysm. That is symptomatic. But I didn't fully realize it until I got up here and tasted the stuff. Then I suspected, for that taste is characteristic. Even one part diluted seventy thousand times gives that decided bitter taste."

"That's all very well," I remarked, recalling the intense bitterness yet on my tongue. "But how do you suppose it was possible for anyone to administer it? It seems to me that he would have said something, if he had swallowed even the minutest part of it. He must have known it. Yet apparently he didn't. At least he said nothing about it--or else Josephson is concealing something."

"Did he swallow it--necessarily?" queried Kennedy, in a tone calculated to show me that the chemical world, at least, was full of a number of things, and there was much to learn.

"Well, I suppose if it had been given hypodermically, it would have a more violent effect," I persisted, trying to figure out a way that the poison might have been given.

"Even more unlikely," objected Craig, with a delight at discovering a new mystery that to me seemed almost fiendish. "No, he would certainly have felt a needle, have cried out and said something about it, if anyone had tried that. This poisoned needle business isn't as easy as some people seem to think nowadays."

"Then he might have absorbed it from the water," I insisted, recalling a recent case of Kennedy's and adding, "by osmosis."

"You saw how difficult it was to dissolve in water," Craig rejected quietly.

"Well, then," I concluded in desperation. "How could it have been introduced?"

"I have a theory," was all he would say, reaching for the railway guide, "but it will take me up to Stratfield to prove it."

His plan gave us a little respite and we paused long enough to lunch, for which breathing s.p.a.ce I was duly thankful. The forenoon saw us on the train, Kennedy carrying a large and c.u.mbersome package which he brought down with him from the laboratory and which we took turns in carrying, though he gave no hint of its contents.

We arrived in Stratfield, a very pretty little mill town, in the middle of the afternoon, and with very little trouble were directed to the Pearcy house, after Kennedy had checked the parcel with the station agent.

Mrs. Pearcy, to whom we introduced ourselves as reporters of the Star, was a tall blonde. I could not help thinking that she made a particularly das.h.i.+ng widow. With her at the time was Isabel Pearcy, a slender girl whose sensitive lips and large, earnest eyes indicated a fine, high-strung nature.

Even before we had introduced ourselves, I could not help thinking that there was a sort of hostility between the women. Certainly it was evident that there was as much difference in temperament as between the b.u.t.terfly and the bee.

"No," replied the elder woman quickly to a request from Kennedy for an interview, "there is nothing that I care to say to the newspapers. They have said too much already about this--unfortunate affair."

Whether it was imagination or not, I fancied that there was an air of reserve about both women. It struck me as a most peculiar household.

What was it? Was each suspicious of the other? Was each concealing something?

I managed to steal a glance at Kennedy's face to see whether there was anything to confirm my own impression. He was watching Mrs. Pearcy closely as she spoke. In fact his next few questions, inconsequential as they were, seemed addressed to her solely for the purpose of getting her to speak.

I followed his eyes and found that he was watching her mouth, in reality. As she answered I noted her beautiful white teeth. Kennedy himself had trained me to notice small things, and at the time, though I thought it was trivial, I recall noticing on her gums, where they joined the teeth, a peculiar bluish-black line.

Kennedy had been careful to address only Mrs. Pearcy at first, and as he continued questioning her, she seemed to realize that he was trying to lead her along.

"I must positively refuse to talk any more," she repeated finally, rising. "I am not to be tricked into saying anything."

She had left the room, evidently expecting that Isabel would follow.

She did not. In fact I felt that Miss Pearcy was visibly relieved by the departure of her stepmother. She seemed anxious to ask us something and now took the first opportunity.

"Tell me," she said eagerly, "how did Mr. Minturn die? What do they really think of it in New York?"

"They think it is poisoning," replied Craig, noting the look on her face.

She betrayed nothing, as far as I could see, except a natural neighborly interest. "Poisoning?" she repeated. "By what?"