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Page 65
"You can't go by the deputy's impressions. He didn't really
remember much of anything. Certainly he was unobserving."
"Perhaps you're right, Walter." Kennedy smiled. "But how about
Gordon?" he added. "There's genuine motive--money!"
"Or Shirley himself!" I attempted to be sarcastic. "There's
genuine motive. Stella made a fool out of him."
"It wasn't a murder of passion," Kennedy reminded me. "No one in
a white heat of rage would study up on snake venoms."
"If it were a slow-smoldering--"
"Shirley's anger wasn't that kind."
"But good heavens!" As usual I arrived nowhere in an argument
with Kennedy. "Circumstantial evidence points to Werner almost
altogether--"
"You've forgotten one point in your chain, Walter."
"What's that?"
"Whoever took the needle from the curtain last night scratched
himself on it and left blood spots on the portieres, tiny ones,
but real blood spots, nevertheless. That means the intruder
inoculated himself with venom. I doubt that the poison was so dry
as to be ineffectual. If it was Werner, how do you account for
the fact that he is still alive?"
"Do you"--I guess my eyes went wide--"do you expect to dig up a
dead man somewhere? Is there some one we suspect and haven't seen
since yesterday?"
He didn't answer, preferring to tantalize me.
"How do you account for it yourself?" I demanded, somewhat hotly.
"Let's call it a day, Walter," he rejoined. "Let's go to bed!"
XVIII
THE ANTIVENIN
I slept late in the morning, so that Kennedy had to wake me. When
we had finished breakfast he led the way to the laboratory, all
without making any effort to satisfy my curiosity. There he
started packing up the tubes and materials he had been studying
in the case, rather than resuming his investigations.
"What's the idea?" I asked, finally, unable to contain myself any
longer.
"You carry this package," he directed. "I'll take the other."
I obeyed, somewhat sulkily I'm afraid.
"You see," he added, as we left the building and hurried to the
taxi stand near the campus, "the next problem is to identify the
particular kind of venom that was used. Besides, I want to know
the nature of the spots on the towel you found. They certainly
were not of venom. I have my suspicions what they really are."
He paused while we selected a vehicle and made ourselves
comfortable. "To save time," he went on, "I thought I'd just go
over to the Castleton Institute. You know in their laboratories
the famous Japanese investigator, Doctor Nagoya, has made some
marvelous discoveries concerning the venom of snakes. It is his
specialty, a matter to which he has practically devoted his life.
Therefore I expect that he will be able to confirm certain
suspicions of mine very quickly, or"--a shrug--"explode a theory
which has slowly been taking form in the back of my head."
When we dismissed the taxi in front of the institute I realized
that this would be my first visit to this institution so lavishly
endowed by the multi-millionaire, Castleton, for the advancement
of experimental science. Kennedy's card, sent in to Doctor
Nagoya, brought that eminent investigator out personally to see
us. He was the very finest type of Oriental savant, a member of
the intellectual nobility of the strange Eastern land only
recently made receptive to the civilization of the West. When he
and Kennedy chatted together in low tones for a few moments it
was hard for me to grasp that each belonged to a basic race
strain fundamentally different from the other. East and West had
met, upon the plane of modern science. The two were simply men of
specialized knowledge, the Japanese pre-eminent in one field,
Kennedy in another.
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