“No doubt,” said I, “a cigar merchant could identify the type and give us the actual dimensions.”
“Probably,” he agreed. “But it is enough for us to note that it was an exceptionally large cigar and pretty certainly an expensive one. And then, as if the size were not enough, there is the strength of the tobacco. The appearance of the leaf tells us that it is an uncommonly strong weed. Taking the size and the strength together, it would be rather more than enough for an ordinary smoker.”
All of this was doubtless true, but it seemed to have no bearing on the question as to how Inspector Badger had met with his death. I was still puzzling over Thorndyke’s apparently irrelevant proceedings when I received a sudden enlightenment. Having finished his examination of its exterior, Thorndyke laid the cigar on the bench and with a long thin knife, cut it cleanly lengthwise down the middle. The action set a chord of memory vibrating, and incidentally engendered in me a desire to kick myself. For, years ago, I had seen Thorndyke cut open another cigar.
“Ha!” I exclaimed. “You are thinking of that poisoned cheroot that Walter Hornby sent you.”
“That we inferred to have been sent by him,” Thorndyke corrected. “We were pretty certainly right, but we had no actual proof. Yes, it seemed possible that this might be a similar case.”
I looked closely at the cut surfaces of the two halves. In the case of the cheroot, the section had shown a whitish patch where the alkaloid—it was aconitine, I remembered—had dried out of the solution. But nothing of the kind was visible in these sections.
“I don’t see any signs of the cigar having been tampered with,” said I. “There doesn’t seem to be any trace of a hypodermic needle, as there was in the cheroot, or any crystals or foreign matter of any kind.”
“As to the needle,” said Thorndyke, “the heat and the steam from the burning end would probably obliterate any traces. But I am not so sure of the absence of foreign matter. There is certainly no solid material, but the whole of the inside has a greasy, sodden appearance which doesn’t seem quite natural, and the smell is not like that of a normal cigar.”
I picked up one of the halves and cautiously sniffed at it.
“I don’t make out anything abnormal,” said I. “It is devilish strong and rather unpleasant, but I can’t distinguish any smell other than that of virulently rank tobacco.”
“Well,” said Thorndyke, “there is no use in guessing. We had better ascertain definitely. And as the foreign matter, if there is any, appears to be a liquid, we will begin by making an attempt to isolate it.”
He glanced at Polton, who, having put the negatives to drain, had now reappeared and was casting wistful glances at the divided cigar.
“Will you want any apparatus prepared, sir, or any reagents?” he asked.
“A fairly wide-mouthed ten-ounce stoppered bottle and some sulphuric ether will do for the start,” replied Thorndyke; and as Polton went to the chemical side of the laboratory in search of these he laid a sheet of paper on the bench, and, placing on it one of the halves of the cigar, proceeded to cut it up into fine shreds. I took possession of the other half and operated on it in a similar manner; and when the whole cigar had been reduced to a heap of dark-brown, clammy “fine-cut” tobacco, we shot it into the bottle, which Thorndyke then half-filled with ether.
“This is going to be a long job,” I remarked, looking a little anxiously at my watch. “This stuff ought to macerate for two or three hours at least.”
“We need not complete the examination tonight,” Thorndyke replied, reassuringly, as he gave the bottle a shake. “If we can decide whether there is or is not any foreign substance present, that will be enough for our immediate purposes; and we ought to be able to settle that in half an hour.”
Thorndyke’s estimate seemed to me rather optimistic, unless—as I was disposed to suspect—he had already decided that some foreign substance was present and had formed some opinion as to its nature. But I made no comment, contenting myself with an occasional turn at shaking the bottle or prodding the mass of sodden tobacco with a glass rod.
At the end of half an hour, Thorndyke decanted off the ether—now stained a brownish yellow—into a beaker which he stood in a pan of warm water to hasten the evaporation, while Polton opened the windows and door to let the vapour escape.
“It’s an awful waste of material, sir,” he remarked, disapprovingly. “We ought to have done this in a retort and recovered the ether.”
“I suppose we ought,” Thorndyke admitted, “but this is the quicker way, and time is more precious than ether. Dr. Jervis wants to get done and go to bed.”
As he was speaking, we all watched the beaker, in which the liquid dwindled in bulk from minute to minute, growing darker in colour as it grew less in volume. At length it was reduced to a thin layer at the bottom of the beaker—less than half a teaspoonful—and as this remained unchanged in volume, and the odour of ether became rapidly less intense, it was evident that evaporation had now ceased. Thorndyke took up the beaker, and, having smelled the contents, turned it from side to side to test the fluidity of the liquid; which flowed backwards and forwards some what sluggishly like a thinnish oil.
“What do you say it is, Jervis?” he asked, handing the beaker to me.
“Probably a mixture,” I replied. “But it smells like nicotine and it looks like nicotine, excepting as to the colour; and as it has been extracted from a cigar, I should say that it is nicotine, stained with colouring matter.”
“I think you are right,” he said, “but we may as well confirm our opinions. The colour test will not answer very well owing to the staining, but it will probably work well enough to differentiate it from coniine, which it resembles in consistency, though not very much in smell. Can we have a white tile, Polton, or the cover of a porcelain capsule?”
From the inexhaustible cupboard Polton produced a small white, enamelled tile which he laid on the bench, while Thorndyke picked up a glass rod which he dipped into the liquid in the beaker and then touched the middle of the tile, leaving a drop on the white surface.
“I have rather forgotten this test,” said I, leaning over the tile, “but it seems to me that this drop shows quite a distinct green tint in spite of the staining. Is that what you expected?”
“Yes,” he replied. “The green tint is characteristic of nicotine. Coniine would have given a pink colour. But we had better try Roussin’s test and settle the question quite definitely. We shall want two test tubes and some iodine.”
While Polton was supplying this requisition, Thorndyke took up a clean filter paper and laid it on the drop of liquid on the tile, which it immediately soaked up, producing an oily spot of a distinct green colour.
“That,” said he, “further supports the suggestion of nicotine. But it is not conclusive in the way that a chemical test is.”
Once more I had the feeling that he was flogging a dead horse, for there seemed to be no reason whatever for doubting that the liquid was nicotine. However, I kept this view to myself, taking the opportunity to refresh my memory as to the procedure of Roussin’s test, while Polton followed the experiment with breathless interest.
It was quite a simple test. Into one test tube Thorndyke dropped a few particles of iodine and poured on them a small quantity of ether. While the iodine was dissolving, he poured a little ether into the other test tube, and, with a pipette, dropped into it a few minims of the liquid from the beaker. When the iodine was dissolved, he poured the solution into the other tube. Almost immediately a brownish-red precipitate separated out and began to settle at the bottom of the tube.
“Is that according to plan?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “The result is positive, so far, but we must wait a few minutes for the final answer to our question. If this liquid is nicotine, the precipitate will presently crystallize out in long, slender needles of a very characteristic colour—ruby red by transmitted light and dark blue by reflected light.”
He stood
the test tube in a stand, and, seating himself on a high stool, proceeded to fill his pipe, while Polton stationed himself opposite the test tube stand and kept an expectant eye on the little mass of sediment. Presently I saw him pick up the magnifying glass, and, having drawn down an adjustable lamp, make a closer inspection. For three or four minutes be continued to watch the test tube through the glass, assisting his observations by placing a sheet of white paper upright behind the stand. At length he reported progress.
“It is beginning to crystallize—long, thin blue crystals.”
“Try it against the light,” said Thorndyke.
Very slowly and carefully, to avoid disturbing the formation of the crystals, Polton lifted the tube from its stand and held it between the lamp and his eye.
“Now they are red,” he reported, “like thin splinters of garnet.”
I took the tube from his hand and examined the growing mass of fine, needle-like crystals, crimson against the light and deep blue when the light was behind me, and then passed it to Thorndyke.
“Yes,” he said when he had verified our observations, “that is the characteristic reaction. So now our question is answered. The liquid that we extracted from the cigar is nicotine.”
“Well,” I remarked, “it has been a very interesting experiment, and I suppose it was worth doing, but the result is not exactly sensational. Nicotine is what one might expect to extract from a cigar, though I must say that the amount is greater than I should have expected, especially as we haven’t got the whole of it.”
Thorndyke regarded me with an indulgent smile.
“My learned friend,” said he, “has allowed his toxicology to get a little rusty, and thereby has missed the point of this experiment. It is not a question of quantity; there ought not to have been any nicotine at all.”
As I gazed at him in astonishment and was beginning to protest, he continued: “The nicotine that we dissolved out with the ether was free nicotine. But there is no free nicotine in a cigar. The alkaloid is combined with malic acid. If this had been a normal cigar, we should have got no free nicotine until we had treated the cigar—or a decoction of it—with a caustic alkali, preferably caustic potash.”
“Then,” I exclaimed, “this nicotine had been artificially introduced into the cigar.”
“Exactly. It was a foreign substance, although it happened to be a natural constituent of a cigar. Probably it was injected into the open end with a hypodermic syringe. But at any rate there it was; and I think that its presence disposes of Miller’s question as to how Inspector Badger was put out of the carriage on to the line.”
“You think that he was suffering from nicotine poisoning?”
“I have no doubt of it. We have seen that he smoked at least an inch of this cigar. The cigar contained naturally anything up to 8 per cent of combined nicotine, part of which would pass into the smoke. To this had been added not less than half a fluid drachm of free nicotine. Now, when we consider that the lethal dose of nicotine is not more than two or three drops, and that more than that amount must have been contained in the part that was burned, we are pretty safe in assuming that the smoker would have been reduced, at least, to a state of physical helplessness.”
“You have no doubt that he was alive when the train went over him?”
“No. But though he was undoubtedly alive, I think it quite likely that he was moribund. He had apparently taken nearly, if not quite, the full lethal dose.”
“It is a little surprising,” I remarked, “that he went on smoking so long; that he did not grow suspicious, seeing that he knew who his fellow passenger was, as apparently he did.”
“I don’t think it is very surprising,” replied Thorndyke. “The procedure had been so well calculated to avert suspicion. Let us suppose—as probably happened—that the stranger produces a cigar-case. There are two cigars in it—one, no doubt, bearing a private mark. The stranger takes the marked cigar and holds out the case to Badger. Now Badger, as we know, usually smoked a pipe, but he was very partial to a cigar, and he preferred a strong one. He would certainly have taken the cigar and would have been impressed by its strength. Probably, owing to the presence of the free nicotine, the cigar would not have burned freely. He would have had to draw at it vigorously to keep it alight, and so would have drawn into his mouth a large amount of the vaporized nicotine.
“Presently he would begin to feel unwell, but at first he would feel nothing more than ordinary tobacco-sickness, and before he had time to become suspicious, he would be in a state of collapse. Nicotine, you will remember, is probably, with the exception of hydrocyanic acid, the most rapid of all poisons in its action.”
“Yes; but if Badger was really in a moribund state, it would seem that it was a tactical mistake to throw him out on the line. If the murderer had simply sat him up in a corner and got out at the next station, no suspicion of any crime would have arisen. The body might not have been observed until the train reached London, and when it was discovered and examined, death would have appeared to have been due to natural causes, or to excessive smoking, if the nicotine poisoning had been detected.”
“I don’t think that would have done, Jervis,” Thorndyke replied. “Your plan would have involved too many contingencies. The next stop was at Dartford—a fairly busy junction. Someone might quite probably have got in there and seen the murderer getting out. And again, Badger might have recovered. You can usually tell when a man is dead, but it is difficult even for an expert to be certain that an insensible man is dying. No, this man was taking no risks, or as few as possible. And he was a desperate man. Probably, Badger was the only officer who knew him, and he was aware of the fact. His safety depended on his getting rid of Badger.”
“I gather,” said I, “that you don’t accept Miller’s view as to the identity of the other passenger. It struck me that he was rather jumping at conclusions.”
“He was, indeed,” Thorndyke agreed, “in a most surprising manner for so shrewd and experienced an officer. It was a positive obsession. I never entertained the idea for a moment, for, apart from the total absence of evidence, it bristled with impossibilities. The man was a runaway prisoner. He was, it is true, wearing his own clothes, but he would probably have no hat and his pockets would almost certainly be empty. How could such a man have got a first-class ticket? And how could he have got away from Maidstone to make his appearance so promptly at Strood? The thing is inconceivable.
“But we had better adjourn this discussion. It is past midnight, and Polton is yawning in a way that threatens us with the job of reducing a dislocation of the lower jaw. The rest of the nicotine extraction can wait till the morning, if it is necessary to pursue the question of quantity. The actual amount is of no great consequence. The presence of free nicotine is the essential fact, and we have established that.”
“And thereby,” said I, as the meeting broke up, “prepared quite a pleasant little surprise for Superintendent Miller.”
CHAPTER VII
The Persistence of Superintendent Miller
As I undressed, and for the short time that I lay awake, I revolved in my mind the amazing events of the evening; and in the morning, no sooner was I in possession of my waking senses than the question presented itself afresh for consideration. What was it that had impelled Thorndyke to secure and preserve that cigar? It had looked like a mere chance shot. But all my knowledge and experience of Thorndyke and his ways was against any such explanation. Thorndyke was not in the habit of making chance shots. Moreover, the act had been deliberate and considered. He had seen the cigar by the instantaneous flash of the lamp; he had walked on for a few paces, and then he had slipped on a glove and gone back to pick up the cigar and bestow it in his pocket with evident care. In those few instants of reflection, something must have occurred to him to suggest the incredible possibility that had been turned into ascertained fact in the laboratory. Now, what could that something have been?
When we met at the breakfast-table, I proceeded
without delay to present my problem for solution.
“I have been wondering, Thorndyke,” said I, “what made you pick up that cigar. Evidently, the results of the examination were not entirely unexpected.”
I could see that my question, also, was not unexpected. But he did not reply immediately, and I continued:
“That cigar was perfectly normal to look at. Yet it seems as if some intuition had suggested to you the possibility of its amazingly abnormal qualities. It is an utter mystery to me.”
“I pray you, Jervis,” he replied, smilingly, “not to accuse me of intuitions. I have always assumed that intuitions are for those who can’t reason. But let us consider the circumstances surrounding that cigar. We will take first the prima facie appearances, disregarding, for the moment, our own personalities and our special knowledge and experience.
“Here was a cigar which had been lighted and thrown away, less than half-smoked. Now, its condition offered evidence, at a glance, of some sudden change in the state of mind of the smoker. That would be true even of a cigarette. Normally, a man either wants a smoke or he does not. If he does, he lights the cigarette and smokes it. If he does not, he doesn’t light it. But if he lights it and then throws it away, that act is evidence of a change of purpose; and that change is almost certainly determined by some change in his circumstances or surroundings.
“But what is true of a cigarette, which costs about a penny, is more emphatically true of a cigar of an expensive type, which must have cost at least half a crown. There must have been some definite reason for its having been thrown away. But within a few yards of the place where the cigar was lying, a man had been murdered. There had been two men in a smoking-compartment. If deceased had been smoking a cigar, he would obviously not have finished it; and the same is almost certainly true of the other. Hence there was an appreciable probability that this cigar had some connection with the murder. But, since a cigar which has been smoked is practically certain to bear fingerprints, it would have been reasonable in any case to secure the cigar and see, if possible, whose fingerprints it bore.
The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 117
