VII
THE ARROW POISON
Back again in the laboratory, Kennedy threw off his coat and plungedagain into his investigation of the blood sample he had taken from thewound in Mendoza's body.
We had scarcely been back half an hour before the door opened and Dr.Leslie's perplexed face looked in on us. He was carrying a large jar,in which he had taken away the materials which he wished to examine.
"Well," asked Kennedy, pausing with a test-tube poised over a Bunsenburner, "have you found anything yet? I haven't had time to get veryfar with my own tests yet."
"Not a blessed thing," returned the coroner. "I'm desperate. One of thechemists suggested cyanide, another carbon monoxide. But there is notrace of either. Then he suggested nux vomica. It wasn't nux vomica;but my tests show that it must have been something very much like it.I've looked for all the ordinary known poisons and some of thelittle-known alkaloids, but, Kennedy, I always get back to the samepoint. There must have been a poison there. He did not die primarily ofthe wound. It was asphyxia due to a poison that really killed him,though the wound might have done so, but not quite so quickly."
I could tell by the look that crossed Kennedy's face that at last a rayof light had pierced the darkness. He reached for a bottle on the shelflabelled spirits of turpentine.
Then he poured a little of the blood sample from the jar which thecoroner had brought into a clean tube and added a few drops of thespirits of turpentine. A cloudy, dark precipitate formed. He smiledquietly, and said, half to himself, "I thought so."
"What is it?" asked the coroner eagerly, "nux vomica?"
Craig shook his head as he stared at the black precipitate. "You wereperfectly right about the asphyxiation, Doctor," he remarked slowly,"but wrong as to the cause. It was a poison--one you would never dreamof."
"What is it?" Leslie and I asked simultaneously.
"Let me take all these samples and make some further tests," he said."I am quite sure of it, but it is new to me. By the way, may I troubleyou and Leslie to go over to the Museum of Natural History with aletter?"
It was evident that he wanted to work uninterrupted, and we agreedreadily, especially because by going we might also be of some use insolving the mystery of the poison.
He sat down and wrote a hasty note to the director of the Museum, and afew moments later we were speeding over in Leslie's car.
At the big building we had no trouble in finding the director andpresenting the note. He was a close friend of Kennedy's and more thanwilling to aid him in any way.
"You will excuse me a moment?" he apologized. "I will get from theSouth American exhibit just what he wants."
We waited several minutes in the office until finally he returnedcarrying a gourd, incrusted on its hollow inside surface with a kind ofblackish substance.
"That is what he wants, I think," the director remarked, wrapping it upcarefully in a box. "I don't need to ask you to tell Professor Kennedyto watch out how he handles the thing. He understands all about it."
We thanked the director and hurried out into the car again, carryingthe package, after his warning, as though it were so much dynamite.
Altogether, I don't suppose that we could have been gone more than anhour.
We burst into the laboratory, but, to my surprise, I did not seeKennedy at his table. I stopped short and looked around.
There he was over in the corner, sprawled out in a chair, a tank ofoxygen beside him, from which he was inhaling laboriously copiousdraughts. He rose as he saw us and walked unsteadily toward the table.
"Why--what's the matter?" I cried, certain that m our absence anattempt had been made on his life, perhaps to carry out the threat ofthe curse.
"N-nothing," he gasped, with an attempt at a smile. "Only I--think Iwas right--about the poison."
I did not like the way he looked. His hand was unsteady and his eyeslooked badly. But he seemed quite put out when I suggested that he wasworking too hard over the case and had better take a turn outdoors withus and have a bite to eat.
"You--you got it?" he asked, seizing the package that contained thegourd and unwrapping it nervously.
He laid the gourd on the table, on which were also several jars ofvarious liquids and a number of other chemicals. At the end of thetable was a large, square package, from which sounds issued, as if itcontained something alive.
"Tell me," I persisted, "what has happened. Has any one been here sincewe have been gone?"
"Not a soul," he answered, working his arms and shoulders as if to getrid of some heavy weight that oppressed his chest.
"Then what has happened that makes you use the oxygen?" I repeated,determined to get some kind of answer from him.
He turned to Leslie. "It was no ordinary asphyxiation, Doctor," he saidquickly.
Leslie nodded. "I could see that," he admitted.
"We have to deal in this case," continued Kennedy, his will-powerovercoming his weakness, "with a poison which is apparently among themost subtle known. A particle of matter so minute as to be hardlydistinguishable by the naked eye, on the point of a lancet or needle, aprick of the skin not anything like that wound of Mendoza's, werenecessary. But, fortunately, more of the poison was used, making itjust that much easier to trace, though for the time the wound, whichmight itself easily have been fatal, threw us off the scent. But giventhese things, not all the power in the world--unless one was fullyprepared--could save the life of the person in whose flesh the woundwas made."
Craig paused a moment, and we listened breathlessly.
"This poison, I find, acts on the so-called endplates of the musclesand nerves. It produces complete paralysis, but not loss ofconsciousness, sensation, circulation, or respiration until the endapproaches. It seems to be one of the most powerful agents of which Ihave ever heard. When introduced in even a minute quantity it producesdeath finally by asphyxiation--by paralyzing the muscles ofrespiration. This asphyxia is what puzzled you, Leslie."
He reached over and took a white mouse from the huge box on the cornerof the table.
"Let me show you what I have found," he said. "I am now going to injecta little of the blood serum of the murdered man into this white mouse."
He took a needle and injected some of a liquid which he had isolated.The mouse did not even wince, so lightly did he touch it. But as wewatched, its life seemed gently to ebb away, without pain, withoutstruggle. Its breath simply seemed to stop.
Next he took the gourd which we had brought and with a knife scrapedoff just the minutest particle of the black, licorice-like stuff thatincrusted it. He dissolved the particle in some alcohol, and with asterilized needle repeated his experiment on a second mouse. The effectwas precisely similar to that produced by the blood on the first.
I was intent on what Craig was doing when Dr. Leslie broke in with aquestion. "May I ask," he queried, "whether, admitting that the firstmouse died at least apparently in the same manner as the second, youhave proved that the poison is the same in both cases? And if it is thesame, can you show that it affects human beings in the same way, thatenough of it has been discovered in the blood of Mendoza to have causedhis death? In other words, I want the last doubt set aside."
If ever Craig startled me, it was by his quiet reply:
"I've isolated it in his blood, extracted it, sterilized it, and I'vetried it on myself."
In breathless amazement, with eyes riveted on him, we listened. "Thenthat was what was the matter?" I blurted out. "You had been trying thepoison on YOURSELF?"
He nodded unconcernedly. "Altogether," he explained, as Leslie and Ilistened, speechless, "I was able to recover from both blood samplessix centigrams of the poison. It is almost unknown. I could only besure of what I discovered by testing the physiological effects. I wasvery careful. What else was there to do? I couldn't ask you fellows totry it, if I was afraid."
"Good heavens!" gasped Leslie, "and alone, too."
"You wouldn't have let me do it, if I hadn't got rid of you," he smiledquie
tly.
Leslie shook his head. "Tried it on the dog and made himself the dog!"exclaimed Leslie. "I need the credit of a successful case--but I'll nottake this one."
Kennedy laughed.
"Starting with two centigrams of the stuff as a moderate dose," hepursued, while I listened, stunned at his daring, "I injected it intomy right arm subcutaneously. Then I slowly worked my way up to threeand then four centigrams. You see what I had recovered was far from thereal thing. They did not seem at first to produce any very appreciableresults other than to cause some dizziness, slight vertigo, aconsiderable degree of lassitude, and an extremely painful headache ofrather unusual duration."
"Good night!" I exclaimed. "Didn't that satisfy you?"
"Five centigrams considerably improved on it," he continued, paying noattention to me. "It caused a degree of lassitude and vertigo that wasmost distressing, and six centigrams, the whole amount which I hadrecovered from the samples of blood, gave me the fright of my liferight here in this laboratory a few minutes before you came in."
Leslie and I looked at each other and shook our heads.
"Perhaps I was not wise in giving myself so large an injection on a daywhen I was overheated and below par otherwise, because of the strain Ihave been under in handling this case, as well as other work. Howeverthat may be, the added centigram produced so much more on top of thefive centigrams I had previously taken that for a time I had reason tofear that that additional centigram was just the amount needed to bringmy experiments to a permanent close.
"Within three minutes of the time of injection the dizziness andvertigo had become so great as to make walking seem impossible. Inanother minute the lassitude rapidly crept over me, and the seriousdisturbance of my breathing made it apparent to me that walking, wavingmy arms, anything, was imperative. My lungs felt glued up, and themuscles of my chest refused to work. Everything swam before my eyes,and I was soon reduced to walking up and down the laboratory floor withhalting steps, only preventing falling on the floor by holding fast tothe edge of the table.
"I thought of the tank of oxygen, and managed to crawl over and turn iton. I gulped at it. It seemed to me that I spent hours gasping forbreath. It reminded me of what I once experienced in the Cave of theWinds of Niagara, where water is more abundant in the atmosphere thanair. Yet my watch afterward indicated only about twenty minutes ofextreme distress. But that twenty minutes is one period I shall neverforget. I advise you, Leslie, if you are ever so foolish as to try theexperiment, to remain below the five-centigram limit."
"Believe me, I'd rather lose my job," returned Leslie.
"How much of the stuff was administered to Mendoza," went on Kennedy,"I cannot say. But it must have been a good deal more than I took. Sixcentigrams which I recovered from these small samples are onlynine-tenths of a grain. You see what effect that much had. I trust thatanswers your question?"
Dr. Leslie was too overwhelmed to reply.
"What is this deadly poison that was used on Mendoza?" I managed to ask.
"You have been fortunate enough to obtain a sample of it from theMuseum of Natural History," returned Craig. "It comes in a littlegourd, or often a calabash. This is in a gourd. It is a blackish,brittle stuff, incrusting the sides of the gourd just as if it waspoured in in the liquid state and left to dry. Indeed, that is justwhat has been done by those who manufacture it after a lengthy andsomewhat secret process."
He placed the gourd on the edge of the table, where we could see itclosely. I was almost afraid even to look at it.
"The famous traveller, Sir Robert Schomburgk, first brought it intoEurope, and Darwin has described it. It is now an article of commerce,and is to be found in the United States Pharmacoepia as a medicine,though, of course, it is used in only very minute quantities, as aheart stimulant."
Craig opened a book to a place he had marked. "Here's an account ofit," he said. "Two natives were one day hunting. They were armed withblow-pipes and quivers full of poisoned darts made of thin, charredpieces of bamboo, tipped with this stuff. One of them aimed a dart. Itmissed the object overhead, glanced off the tree, and fell down on thehunter himself. This is how the other native reported the result:
"'Quacca takes the dart out of his shoulder. Never a word. Puts it inhis quiver and throws it in the stream. Gives me his blow-pipe for hislittle son. Says to me good-bye for his wife and the village. Then helies down. His tongue talks no longer. No sight in his eyes. He foldshis arms. He rolls over slowly. His mouth moves without sound. I feelhis heart. It goes fast and then slow. It stops. Quacca has shot hislast woorali dart.'"
Leslie and I looked at Kennedy, and the horror of the thing sank deepinto our minds. Woorali. What was it?
"Woorali, or curare," explained Craig slowly, "is the well-known poisonwith which the South American Indians of the upper Orinoco tip theirarrows. Its principal ingredient is derived from the Strychnos toxiferatree, which yields also the drug nux vomica, which you, Dr. Leslie,have mentioned. On the tip of that Inca dagger must have been a largedose of the dread curare, this fatal South American Indian arrowpoison."
"Say," ejaculated Leslie, "this thing begins to look eerie to me. Howabout that piece of paper that I sent to you with the warning about thecurse of Mansiche and the Gold of the Gods. What if there should besomething in it? I'd rather not be a victim of this curare, if it's allthe same to you, Kennedy."
Kennedy was thinking deeply. Who could have sent the messages to usall? Who was likely to have known of curare? I confess that I had noteven an idea. All of them, any of them, might have known.
The deeper we got into it, the more dastardly the crime against Mendozaseemed. Involuntarily, I thought of the beautiful little Senorita,about whom these terrible events centred. Though I had no reason forit, I could not forget the fear that she had for Senora de Moche, andthe woman as she had been revealed to us in our late interview.
"I suppose a Peruvian of average intelligence might know of the arrowpoison of Indians of another country," I ventured to Craig.
"Quite possible," he returned, catching immediately the drift of mythoughts. "But the shoe-prints indicated that it was a man who stolethe dagger from the Museum. It may be that it was already poisoned,too. In that case the thief would not have had to know anything ofcurare, would not have needed to stab so deeply if he had known."
I must confess that I was little further along in the solution of themystery than I had been when I first saw Mendoza's body. Kennedy,however, did not seem to be worried. Leslie had long since given uptrying to form an opinion and, now that the nature of the poison wasfinally established, was glad to leave the case in our hands.
As for me, I was inclined to agree with Dr. Leslie, and, long after hehad left, there kept recurring to my mind those words:
BEWARE THE CURSE OF MANSICHE ON THE GOLD OF THE GODS.