We looked at each other, and the horror of the thing sank deep into our minds. Woorali. What was it? There were many travellers in the room who had been in the Orient, home of poisons, and in South America. Which one had run across the poison?
“Woorali, or curare,” said Craig slowly, “is the well-known poison with which the South American Indians of the upper Orinoco tip their arrows. Its principal ingredient is derived from the Strychnos toxifera tree, which yields also the drug nux vomica.”
A great light dawned on me. I turned quickly to where Vanderdyke was sitting next to Mrs. Ralston, and a little behind her. His stony stare and laboured breathing told me that he had read the purport of Kennedy’s actions.
“For God’s sake, Craig,” I gasped. “An emetic, quick—Vanderdyke.”
A trace of a smile flitted over Vanderdyke’s features, as much as to say that he was beyond our interference.
“Vanderdyke,” said Craig, with what seemed to me a brutal calmness, “then it was you who were the visitor who last saw Laura Wainwright and John Templeton alive. Whether you shot a dart at them I do not know. But you are the murderer.”
Vanderdyke raised his hand as if to assent. It fell back limp, and I noted the ring of the bluest lapis lazuli.
Mrs. Ralston threw herself toward him. “Will you not do something? Is there no antidote? Don’t let him die!” she cried.
“You are the murderer,” repeated Kennedy, as if demanding a final answer.
Again the hand moved in confession, and he feebly moved the finger on which shone the ring.
Our attention was centred on Vanderdyke. Mrs. Ralston, unobserved, went to the table and picked up the gourd. Before O’Connor could stop her she had rubbed her tongue on the black substance inside. It was only a little bit, for O’Connor quickly dashed it from her lips and threw the gourd through the window, smashing the glass.
“Kennedy,” he shouted frantically, “Mrs. Ralston has swallowed some of it.”
Kennedy seemed so intent on Vanderdyke that I had to repeat the remark.
Without looking up, he said: “Oh, one can swallow it—it’s strange, but it is comparatively inert if swallowed even in a pretty good-sized quantity. I doubt if Mrs. Ralston ever heard of it before except by hearsay. If she had, she’d have scratched herself with it instead of swallowing it.”
If Craig had been indifferent to the emergency of Vanderdyke before, he was all action now that the confession had been made. In an instant Vanderdyke was stretched on the floor and Craig had taken out the apparatus I had seen during the afternoon.
“I am prepared for this,” he exclaimed quickly. “Here is the apparatus for artificial respiration. Nott, hold that rubber funnel over his nose, and start the oxygen from the tank. Pull his tongue forward so it won’t fall down his throat and choke him. I’ll work his arms. Walter, make a tourniquet of your handkerchief and put it tightly on the muscles of his left arm. That may keep some of the poison in his arm from spreading into the rest of his body. This is the only antidote known—artificial respiration.”
Kennedy was working feverishly, going through the motions of first aid to a drowned man. Mrs. Ralston was on her knees beside Vanderdyke, kissing his hands and forehead whenever Kennedy stopped for a minute, and crying softly.
“Schuyler, poor boy, I wonder how you could have done it. I was with him that day. We rode up in his car, and as we passed through Williston he said he would stop a minute and wish Templeton luck. I didn’t think it strange, for he said he had nothing any longer against Laura Wainwright, and Templeton only did his duty as a lawyer against us. I forgave John for prosecuting us, but Schuyler didn’t, after all. Oh, my poor boy, why did you do it? We could have gone somewhere else and started all over again—it wouldn’t have been the first time.”
At last came the flutter of an eyelid and a voluntary breath or two. Vanderdyke seemed to realise where he was. With a last supreme effort he raised his hand and drew it slowly across his face. Then he fell back, exhausted by the effort.
But he had at last put himself beyond the reach of the law. There was no tourniquet that would confine the poison now in the scratch across his face. Back of those lack-lustre eyes he heard and knew, but could not move or speak. His voice was gone, his limbs, his face, his chest, and, last, his eyes. I wondered if it were possible to conceive a more dreadful torture than that endured by a mind which so witnessed the dying of one organ after another of its own body, shut up, as it were, in the fulness of life, within a corpse.
I looked in bewilderment at the scratch on his face. “How did he do it?” I asked.
Carefully Craig drew off the azure ring and examined it. In that part which surrounded the blue lapis lazuli, he indicated a hollow point, concealed. It worked with a spring and communicated with a little receptacle behind, in such a way that the murderer could give the fatal scratch while shaking hands with his victim.
I shuddered, for my hand had once been clasped by the one wearing that poison ring, which had sent Templeton, and his fiancee and now Vanderdyke himself, to their deaths.
VIII. “SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION”
Kennedy and I had risen early, for we were hustling to get off for a week-end at Atlantic City. Kennedy was tugging at the straps of his grip and remonstrating with it under his breath, when the door opened and a messenger-boy stuck his head in.
“Does Mr. Kennedy live here?” he asked.
Craig impatiently seized the pencil, signed his name in the book, and tore open a night letter. From the prolonged silence that followed I felt a sense of misgiving. I, at least, had set my heart on the Atlantic City outing, but with the appearance of the messenger-boy I intuitively felt that the board walk would not see us that week.
“I’m afraid the Atlantic City trip is off, Walter,” remarked Craig seriously. “You remember Tom Langley in our class at the university? Well, read that.”
I laid down my safety razor and took the message. Tom had not spared words, and I could see at a glance at the mere length of the thing that it must be important. It was from Camp Hang-out in the Adirondacks.
“Dear old K.,” it began, regardless of expense, “can you arrange to come up here by next train after you receive this? Uncle Lewis is dead. Most mysterious. Last night after we retired noticed peculiar odour about house. Didn’t pay much attention. This morning found him lying on floor of living-room, head and chest literally burned to ashes, but lower part of body and arms untouched. Room shows no evidence of fire, but full of sort of oily soot. Otherwise nothing unusual. On table near body siphon of seltzer, bottle of imported limes, and glass for rickeys. Have removed body, but am keeping room exactly as found until you arrive. Bring Jameson. Wire if you cannot come, but make every effort and spare no expense. Anxiously, Tom Langley.”
Craig was impatiently looking at his watch as I hastily ran through the letter.
“Hurry, Walter,” he exclaimed. “We can just catch the Empire State. Never mind shaving—we’ll have a stopover at Utica to wait for the Montreal express. Here, put the rest of your things in your grip and jam it shut. We’ll get something to eat on the train—I hope. I’ll wire we’re coming. Don’t forget to latch the door.”
Kennedy was already half-way to the elevator, and I followed ruefully, still thinking of the ocean and the piers, the bands and the roller chairs.
It was a good ten-hour journey up to the little station nearest Camp Hang-out and at least a two hour ride after that. We had plenty of time to reflect over what this death might mean to Tom and his sister and to speculate on the manner of it. Tom and Grace Langley were relatives by marriage of Lewis Langley, who, after the death of his wife, had made them his proteges. Lewis Langley was principally noted, as far as I could recall, for being a member of some of the fastest clubs of both New York and London.