The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [97]
“What?” Miss Howard said, leaning over and looking at the stick in shock.
“Which explains the chloroform,” Lucius added, as he started to eat.
Mr. Moore, who seconds before had been looking very happy about the brook trout in almond sauce what the waiter had brought him, now dropped his fork and knife in frustration. “All right. Here I go again, the moron of the group.” He braced himself. “What are you people talking about, please?”
“St. Ignatius bean,” Miss Howard answered, as if the first mug what you might’ve buttonholed on the sidewalk outside the terrace would’ve known what she meant. “It’s one of the plants in which strychnine occurs naturally.”
“That’s it!” the Doctor said with a snap of his fingers. “Strychnine! I was certain I recognized it.”
“It’s soluble in water, sparingly soluble in alcohol, and very soluble in chloroform,” Lucius said. “Presuming the intent here was to disable and not to kill, our man knew exactly what proportions to use. And that’s no mean trick.”
“How come?” I asked, tearing into my steak and gulping down my root beer.
“Because strychnine’s more powerful than other drugs used for similar purposes,” Marcus said, handing the stick to Miss Howard and finally starting in on his chicken. “Curare, for instance, is a blend of ingredients—strychnine’s one of them—and that blending makes it easier to control. But in its pure form, strychnine is very tricky stuff. That’s why people use it when they’ve got severe vermin problems. Better than arsenic, really.”
“But can you really be so sure that it is pure strychnine?” the Doctor asked.
“The odor’s fairly distinctive,” Lucius answered. “And the presence of chloroform as a solvent would seem to confirm it. But I’ll take it home if you like, and run some tests. Fairly simple. Little sulfuric acid, some potassium dichromate—”
“Oh, sure,” Mr. Moore said, now devouring his trout. “I do it all the time …”
“Very well,” the Doctor said. “But let us, for the moment, assume you are correct, Detective Sergeant. Can you say who would possess such knowledge, offhand?”
“Well,” Lucius answered, “the stick appears to be some sort of aboriginal dart or arrow.”
“Yes,” the Doctor said. “That was my thought.”
“But as for who uses pure strychnine in hunting, or even warfare—there you’ve got me.”
“And there,” the Doctor said, setting to work on a plate of crab cakes, “I also find my own assignment for tomorrow.”
“Ah-ha!” Mr. Moore said, holding up his fork. “At last, a cryptic comment that I can decipher—you’re going to see Boas!”
“Exactly, Moore. Boas. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to render his services once again.”
Dr. Franz Boas was another of the Doctor’s dose scientific friends, the head of the Department of Anthropology at the Museum of Natural History and a man who’d helped our team gain some important tips at a crucial point during the Beecham investigation the year before, like Dr. Kreizler, Boas was a German by birth, though he’d come to this country later in life than the Doctor. He’d studied psychology before moving on to anthropology and the United States, so he and the Doctor had no trouble communicating on a whole batch of levels; and whenever he came to the house the dining room was pretty certain to be the scene of lively talks and occasional arguments, during which Dr. Boas would sometimes slip into German and Dr. Kreizler would fall right in with him, making it impossible for me to tell what in the world they were hollering about. But he was a kindly man, was Dr. Boas, and like most of your genuine geniuses he didn’t let his brains turn him into what you might call an intellectual snob.
“I shall take him both the knife and this projectile,” Dr. Kreizler said, “and tell him the story of the child or children that we have spotted on the occasions that the weapons have been used. It may be that he can supply some insight, or that someone on his staff can. I confess, the entire matter mystifies me.”
A general noise of chewing agreement came out of the rest of us, showing that we’d pretty much reached the limits