Part 11 (2/2)
”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. Six centigrams which I recovered from these small samples are only nine-tenths of a grain. You see what effect that much had. I trust that answers 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 the Museum of Natural History,” returned Craig. ”It comes in a little gourd, 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 was poured in in the liquid state and left to dry. Indeed, that is just what has been done by those who manufacture it after a lengthy and somewhat secret process.”
He placed the gourd on the edge of the table, where we could see it closely. I was almost afraid even to look at it.
”The famous traveller, Sir Robert Schomburgk, first brought it into Europe, 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 quant.i.ties, as a heart stimulant.”
Craig opened a book to a place he had marked. ”Here's an account of it,” he said. ”Two natives were one day hunting. They were armed with blow-pipes and quivers full of poisoned darts made of thin, charred pieces of bamboo, tipped with this stuff. One of them aimed a dart. It missed the object overhead, glanced off the tree, and fell down on the hunter himself. This is how the other native reported the result:
”'Quacca takes the dart out of his shoulder. Never a word. Puts it in his quiver and throws it in the stream. Gives me his blow-pipe for his little son. Says to me good-bye for his wife and the village. Then he lies down. His tongue talks no longer. No sight in his eyes. He folds his arms. He rolls over slowly. His mouth moves without sound. I feel his heart. It goes fast and then slow. It stops. Quacca has shot his last woorali dart.'”
Leslie and I looked at Kennedy, and the horror of the thing sank deep into our minds. Woorali. What was it?
”Woorali, or curare,” explained Craig slowly, ”is the well-known poison with which the South American Indians of the upper Orinoco tip their arrows. Its princ.i.p.al ingredient is derived from the Strychnos toxifera tree, which yields also the drug nux vomica, which you, Dr. Leslie, have mentioned. On the tip of that Inca dagger must have been a large dose of the dread curare, this fatal South American Indian arrow poison.”
”Say,” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Leslie, ”this thing begins to look eerie to me. How about that piece of paper that I sent to you with the warning about the curse of Mansiche and the Gold of the G.o.ds. What if there should be something in it? I'd rather not be a victim of this curare, if it's all the same to you, Kennedy.”
Kennedy was thinking deeply. Who could have sent the messages to us all? Who was likely to have known of curare? I confess that I had not even an idea. All of them, any of them, might have known.
The deeper we got into it, the more dastardly the crime against Mendoza seemed. Involuntarily, I thought of the beautiful little Senorita, about whom these terrible events centred. Though I had no reason for it, I could not forget the fear that she had for Senora de Moche, and the woman as she had been revealed to us in our late interview.
”I suppose a Peruvian of average intelligence might know of the arrow poison of Indians of another country,” I ventured to Craig.
”Quite possible,” he returned, catching immediately the drift of my thoughts. ”But the shoe-prints indicated that it was a man who stole the 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 of curare, 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 the mystery than I had been when I first saw Mendoza's body. Kennedy, however, did not seem to be worried. Leslie had long since given up trying to form an opinion and, now that the nature of the poison was finally established, was glad to leave the case in our hands.
As for me, I was inclined to agree with Dr. Leslie, and, long after he had left, there kept recurring to my mind those words:
BEWARE THE CURSE OF MANSICHE ON THE GOLD OF THE G.o.dS.
VIII
THE ANONYMOUS LETTER
”I think I will drop in to see Senorita Mendoza,” considered Kennedy, as he cleared up the materials which he had been using in his investigation of the arrow poison. ”She is a study to me--in fact, the reticence of all these people is hard to combat.”
As we entered the apartment where the Mendozas lived, it was difficult to realize that only a few hours had elapsed since we had first been introduced to this strange affair. In the hall, however, were still some reporters waiting in the vain hope that some fragment of a story might turn up.
”Let's have a talk with the boys,” suggested Craig, before we entered the Mendoza suite. ”After all, the newspaper men are the best detectives I know. If it wasn't for them, half our murder cases wouldn't ever be solved. As a matter of fact, 'yellow journals' are more useful to a city than half the detective force.”
<script>