Part 11

“One in a hundred and twenty-five thousand, Mr Carrados,” he said, offering him the mixture.

Carrados just touched the liquid with his lips, considered the impression and then wiped his mouth.

“Now for the smell.”

The unstoppered bottle was handed to him and he took in its exhalation.

“Stewed mushrooms!” was his comment. “What is it used for, Mr Lightcraft?”

“Nothing that I know of.”

“But your customer must have stated an application.”

The pallid chemist flushed a little at the recollection of that incident.

“Yes,” he conceded. “There is a good deal about the whole business that is still a mystery to me. The man came in shortly after I had lit up and nodded familiarly as he said: ‘Good-evening, Mr Lightcraft.’ I naturally assumed that he was someone whom I could not quite place. ‘I want another half-pound of nitre,’ he said, and I served him. Had he bought nitre before, I have since tried to recall and I cannot. It is a common enough article and I sell it every day. I have a poor memory for faces I am willing to admit. It has hampered me in business many a time. We chatted about nothing in particular as I did up the parcel. After he had paid and turned to go he looked back again. ‘By the way, do you happen to have any bhurine?’ he inquired. Unfortunately I had a few ounces. ‘Of course you know its nature?’ I cautioned him. ‘May I ask what you require it for?’ He nodded and held up the parcel of nitre he had in his hand. ‘The same thing,’ he replied, ‘taxidermy.’ Then I supplied him with half-an-ounce.”

“As a matter of fact, is it used in taxidermy?”

“It does not seem to be. I have made inquiry and no one knows of it. Nitre is largely used, and some of the dangerous poisons--arsenic and mercuric chloride, for instance--but not this. No, it was a subterfuge.”

“Now the poison book, if you please.”

Mr Lightcraft produced it without demur and the blind man ran his finger along the indicated line.

“Yes; this is quite satisfactory. Is it a fact, Mr Lightcraft, that not half-a-dozen chemists in London stock this particular substance? We are told that.”

“I can quite believe it. I certainly don’t know of another.”

“Strangely enough, your customer of the sixth seems to have come straight here. Do you issue a price-list?”

“Only a localised one of certain photographic goods. Bhurine is not included.”

“You can suggest no reason why Mr Phillip Loudham should be inspired to presume that he would be able to procure this unusual drug from you? You have never corresponded with him nor come across his name or address before?”

“No. As far as I can recollect, I know nothing whatever of him.”

“Then as yet you must assume that it was pure chance. By the way, Mr Lightcraft, how does it come that _you_ stock this rare poison, which has no commercial use and for which there is no demand?”

The chemist permitted himself to smile at the blunt terms of the inquiry.

“In the ordinary way I don’t stock it,” he replied. “This is a small quantity which I had over from my own use.”

“Your own use? Oh, then it has a use after all?”

“No, scarcely that. Some time ago it leaked out in a corner of the photographic world that a great revolution in colour photography was on the point of realisation by the use of bhurine in one of the processes. I, among others, at once took it up. Unfortunately it was another instance of a discovery that is correct in theory breaking down in practice. Nothing came of it.”

“Dear, dear me,” said Carrados softly, with sympathetic understanding in his voice; “what a pity. You are interested in photography, Mr Lightcraft?”

“It is the hobby of my life, sir. Of course most chemists dabble in it as a part of their business, but I devote all my spare time to experimenting. Colour photography in particular.”

“Colour photography; yes. It has a great future. This bhurine process--I suppose it would have been of considerable financial value if it had worked?”

Mr Lightcraft laughed quietly and rubbed his hands together. For the moment he had forgotten Loudham and the annoying case and lived in his enthusiasm.

“I should rather say it would, Mr Carrados,” he replied. “It would have been the most epoch-marking thing since Gaudin produced the first dry plate in ’54. Consider it--the elaborate processes of Dyndale, Eiloff and Jupp reduced to the simplicity of a single contact print giving the entire range of chromatic variation. Financially it will scarcely bear thinking about by artificial light.”

“Was it widely taken up?” asked Carrados.

“The bhurine idea?”

“Yes. You spoke of the secret leaking out. Were many in the know?”

“Not at all. The group of initiates was only a small one and I should imagine that, on reflection, every man kept it to himself. It certainly never became public. Then when the theory was definitely exploded, of course no one took any further interest in it.”

“Were all who were working on the same lines known to you, Mr Lightcraft?”

“Well, yes; more or less I suppose they would be,” said the chemist thoughtfully. “You see, the man who stumbled on the formula was a member of the Iris--a society of those interested in this subject, of which I was the secretary--and I don’t think it ever got beyond the committee.”

“How long ago was this?”

“A year--eighteen months. It led to unpleasantness and broke up the society.”

“Suppose it happened to come to your knowledge that one of the original circle was quietly pursuing his experiments on the same lines with bhurine--what should you infer from it?”

Mr Lightcraft considered. Then he regarded Carrados with a sharp, almost a startled, glance and then he fell to biting his nails in perplexed uncertainty.

“It would depend on who it was,” he replied.

“Was there by any chance one who was unknown to you by sight but whose address you were familiar with?”

“Paulden!” exclaimed Mr Lightcraft. “Paulden, by heaven! I do believe you’re right. He was the ablest of the lot and he never came to the meetings--a corresponding member. Southem, the original man who struck the idea, knew Paulden and told him of it. Southem was an impractical genius who would never be able to make anything work. Paulden--yes, Paulden it was who finally persuaded Southem that there was nothing in it. He sent a report to the same effect to be read at one of the meetings. So Paulden is taking up bhurine again----”

“Where does he live?” inquired Carrados.

“Ivor House, Wilmington Lane, Enstead. As secretary I have written there a score of times.”

“It is on the Great Western--Paddington,” commented the blind man. “Still, can you get out the addresses of the others in the know, Mr Lightcraft?”

“Certainly, certainly. I have the book of membership. But I am convinced now that Paulden was the man. I believe that I did actually see him once some years ago, but he has grown a moustache since.”

“If you had been convinced of that a few days ago it would have saved us some awkwardness,” volunteered Mr Carlyle with a little dignified asperity.

“When you came before, Mr Carlyle, you were so convinced yourself of it being Mr Loudham that you wouldn’t hear of me thinking of anyone else,” retorted the chemist. “You will bear me out also that I never positively identified him as my customer. Now here is the book. Southem, Potter’s Bar. Voynich, Islington. Crawford, Streatham Hill. Brown, Southampton Row. Vickers, Clapham Common. Tidey, Fulham. All those I knew quite well--associated with them week after week. Williams I didn’t know so closely. He is dead. Bigwood has gone to Canada. I don’t think anyone else was in the bhurine craze--as we called it afterwards.”

“But now? What would you call it now?” queried Carrados.

“Now? Well, I hope that you will get me out of having to turn up at court and that sort of thing, Mr Carrados. If Paulden is going on experimenting with bhurine again on the sly I shall want all my spare time to do the same myself!”

A few hours later the two investigators rang the bell of a substantial detached house in Enstead, the little country town twenty miles out in Berkshire, and asked to see Mr Paulden.

“It is no good taking Lightcraft to identify the man,” Carrados had decided. “If Paulden denied it, our friend’s obliging record in that line would put him out of court.”

“I maintain an open mind on the subject,” Carlyle had replied. “Lightcraft is admittedly a very bending reed, but there is no reason why he should not have been right before and wrong to-day.”

They were shown into a ceremonial reception-room to wait. Mr Carlyle diagnosed snug circumstances and the tastes of an indoors, comfort-loving man in the surroundings.

The door opened, but it was to admit a middle-aged, matronly lady with good-humour and domestic capability proclaimed by every detail of her smiling face and easy manner.

“You wished to see my husband?” she asked with friendly courtesy.

“Mr Paulden? Yes, we should like to,” replied Carlyle, with his most responsive urbanity. “It is a matter that need not occupy more than a few minutes.”

“He is very busy just now. If it has to do with the election”--a local contest was at its height--“he is not interested in politics and scarcely ever votes.” Her manner was not curious, but merely reflected a business-like desire to save trouble all round.

“Very sensible too, ve-ry sensible indeed,” almost warbled Mr Carlyle with instinctive cajolery. “After all,” he continued, mendaciously appropriating as his own an aphorism at which he had laughed heartily a few days before in the theatre, “after all, what does an election do but change the colour of the necktie of the man who picks our pockets? No, no, Mrs Paulden, it is merely a--um--quite personal matter.”

The lady looked from one to the other with smiling amiability.

“Some little mystery,” her expression seemed to say. “All right; I don’t mind, only perhaps I could help you if I knew.”

“Mr Paulden is in his dark-room now,” was what she actually did say. “I am afraid, I am really afraid that I shan’t be able to persuade him to come out unless I can take a definite message.”

“One understands the difficulty of tempting an enthusiast from his work,” suggested Carrados, speaking for the first time. “Would it be permissible to take us to the door of the dark-room, Mrs Paulden, and let us speak to your husband through it?”

“We can try that way,” she acquiesced readily, “if it is really so important.”

“I think so,” he replied.

The dark-room lay across the hall. Mrs Paulden conducted them to the door, waited a moment and then knocked quietly.

“Yes?” sang out a voice, rather irritably one might judge, from inside.

“Two gentlemen have called to see you about something, Lance----”

“I cannot see anyone when I am in here,” interrupted the voice with rising sharpness. “You know that, Clara----”

“Yes, dear,” she said soothingly; “but listen. They are at the door here and if you can spare the time just to come and speak you will know without much trouble if their business is as important as they think.”

“Wait a minute,” came the reply after a moment’s pause, and then they heard someone approach the door from the other side.

It was a little difficult to know exactly how it happened in the obscure light of the corner of the hall. Carrados had stepped nearer to the door to speak. Possibly he trod on Mr Carlyle’s toe, for there was a confused movement; certainly he put out his hand hastily to recover himself. The next moment the door of the dark-room jerked open, the light was let in and the warm odours of a mixed and vitiated atmosphere rolled out. Secure in the well-ordered discipline of his excellent household, Mr Paulden had neglected the precaution of locking himself in.

“Confound it all,” shouted the incensed experimenter in a towering rage, “confound it all, you’ve spoiled the whole thing now!”

“Dear me,” apologised Carrados penitently, “I am so sorry. I think it must have been my fault, do you know. Does it really matter?”

“Matter!” stormed Mr Paulden, recklessly flinging open the door fully now to come face to face with his disturbers--“matter letting a flood of light into a dark-room in the middle of a delicate experiment!”

“Surely it was very little,” persisted Carrados.

“Pshaw,” snarled the angry gentleman; “it was enough. You know the difference between light and dark, I suppose?”

Mr Carlyle suddenly found himself holding his breath, wondering how on earth Max had conjured that opportune challenge to the surface.

“No,” was the mild and deprecating reply--the appeal _ad misericordiam_ that had never failed him yet--“no, unfortunately I don’t, for I am blind. That is why I am so awkward.”

Out of the shocked silence Mrs Paulden gave a little croon of pity. The moment before she had been speechless with indignation on her husband’s behalf. Paulden felt as though he had struck a suffering animal. He stammered an apology and turned away to close the unfortunate door. Then he began to walk slowly down the hall.

“You wished to see me about something?” he remarked, with matter-of-fact civility. “Perhaps we had better go in here.” He indicated the reception-room where they had waited and followed them in. The admirable Mrs Paulden gave no indication of wishing to join the party.

Carrados came to the point at once.

“Mr Carlyle,” he said, indicating his friend, “has recently been acting for the prosecution in a case of alleged poisoning that the Public Prosecutor has now taken up. I am interested in the defence. Both sides are thus before you, Mr Paulden.”

“How does this concern me?” asked Paulden with obvious surprise.

“You are experimenting with bhurine. The victim of this alleged crime undoubtedly lost his life by bhurine poisoning. Do you mind telling us when and where you acquired your stock of this scarce substance?”

“I have had----”

“No--a moment, Mr Paulden, before you reply,” struck in Carrados with arresting hand. “You must understand that nothing so grotesque as to connect you with a crime is contemplated. But a man is under arrest and the chief point against him is the half-ounce of bhurine that Lightcraft of Trenion Street sold to someone at half-past five last Wednesday fortnight. Before you commit yourself to any statement that it may possibly be difficult to recede from, you should realise that this inquiry will be pushed to the very end.”

“How do you know that I am using bhurine?”

“That,” parried Carrados, “is a blind man’s secret.”

“Oh, well. And you say that someone has been arrested through this fact?”

“Yes. Possibly you have read something of the St Abbots mushroom poisoning case?”

“I have no interest in the sensational ephemera of the Press. Very well; it was I who bought the bhurine from Lightcraft that Wednesday afternoon. I gave a false name and address, I must admit. I had a sufficient private reason for so doing.”

“This knocks what is vulgarly termed ‘the stuffing’ out of the case for the prosecution,” observed Carlyle, who had been taking a note. “It may also involve you in some trouble yourself, Mr Paulden.”

“I don’t think that you need regard that very seriously in the circumstances,” said Carrados reassuringly.

“They must find some scapegoat, you know,” persisted Mr Carlyle. “Loudham will raise Cain over it.”

“I don’t think so. Loudham, as the prosecution will roundly tell him, has only himself to thank for not giving a satisfactory account of his movements. Loudham will be lectured, Lightcraft will be fined the minimum, and Mr Paulden will, I imagine, be told not to do it again.”

The man before them laughed bitterly.

“There will be no occasion to do it again,” he remarked. “Do you know anything of the circumstances?”

“Lightcraft told us something connected with colour photography. You distrust Mr Lightcraft, I infer?”

Mr Paulden came down to the heart-easing medium of the street.

“I’ve had some once, thanks,” was what he said with terse expression. “Let me tell you. About eighteen months ago I was on the edge of a great discovery in colour photography. It was my discovery, whatever you may have heard. Bhurine was the medium, and not being then so cautious or suspicious as I have reason to be now, and finding it difficult--really impossible--to procure this substance casually, I sent in an order to Lightcraft to procure me a stock. Unfortunately, in a moment of enthusiasm I had hinted at the anticipated results to a man who was then my friend--a weakling called Southem. Comparing notes with Lightcraft they put two and two together and in a trice most of the secret boiled over.

“If you have ever been within an ace of a monumental discovery you will understand the torment of anxiety and self-reproach that possessed me. For months the result must have trembled in the balance, but even as it evaded me, so it evaded the others. And at last I was able to spread conviction that the bhurine process was a failure. I breathed again.

“You don’t want to hear of the various things that conspired to baffle me. I proceeded with extreme caution and therefore slowly. About two weeks ago I had another foretaste of success and immediately on it a veritable disaster. By some diabolical mischance I contrived to upset my stock bottle of bhurine. It rolled down, smashed to atoms on a developing dish filled with another chemical, and the precious lot was irretrievably lost. To arrest the experiments at that stage for a day was to lose a month. In one place and one alone could I hope to replenish the stock temporarily at such short notice and to do it openly after my last experience filled me with dismay.... Well, you know what happened, and now, I suppose, it will all come out.”

* * * * *

A week after his arrest Philip Loudham and his sister were sitting together in the drawing-room at Hazlehurst, nervous and expectant. Loudham had been discharged scarcely six hours before, with such vindication of his character as the frigid intimation that there was no evidence against him afforded. On his arrival home he had found a letter from Max Carrados--a name with which he was now familiar--awaiting him. There had been other notes and telegrams--messages of sympathy and congratulation, but the man who had brought about his liberation did not include these conventionalities. He merely stated that he purposed calling upon Mr Loudham at nine o’clock that evening and that he hoped it would be convenient for him and all other members of the household to be at home.

“He can scarcely be coming to be thanked,” speculated Loudham, breaking the silence that had fallen on them as the hour approached. “I should have called on him myself to-morrow.”

Mrs Dupreen assented absent-mindedly. Both were dressed in black, and both at that moment had the same thought: that they were dreaming this.

“I suppose you won’t go on living here, Irene?” continued the brother, speaking to make the minutes seem tolerable.

This at least had the effect of bringing Mrs Dupreen back into the present with a rush.

“Of course not,” she replied almost sharply and looking at him direct. “Why should I, now?”

“Oh, all right,” he agreed. “I didn’t suppose you would.” Then, as the front-door bell was heard to ring: “Thank heaven!”

“Won’t you go to meet him in the hall and bring him in?” suggested Mrs Dupreen. “He is blind, you know.”

Carrados was carrying a small leather case which he allowed Loudham to relieve him of, together with his hat and gloves. The introduction to Mrs Dupreen was made, the blind man put in touch with a chair, and then Philip Loudham began to rattle off the acknowledgment of gratitude of which he had been framing and rejecting openings for the last half-hour.

“I’m afraid it’s no good attempting to thank you for the extraordinary service that you’ve rendered me, Mr Carrados,” he began, “and, above all, I appreciate the fact that, owing to you, it has been possible to keep Mrs Guestling’s name entirely out of the case. Of course you know all about that, and my sister knows, so it isn’t worth while beating about the bush. Well, now that I shall have something like a decent income of my own, I shall urge Kitty--Mrs Guestling--to apply for the divorce that she is richly entitled to, and when that is all settled we shall marry at once and try to forget the experiences on both sides that have led up to it. I hope,” he added tamely, “that you don’t consider us really much to blame?”

Carrados shook his head in mild deprecation.

“That is an ethical point that has lain outside the scope of my inquiry,” he replied. “You would hardly imagine that I should disturb you at such a time merely to claim your thanks. Has it occurred to you why I should have come?”

Brother and sister exchanged looks and by their silence gave reply.

“We have still to find who poisoned Charlie Winpole.”

Loudham stared at their guest in frank bewilderment. Mrs Dupreen almost closed her eyes. When she spoke it was in a pained whisper.

“Is there anything more to be gained by pursuing that idea, Mr Carrados?” she asked pleadingly. “We have passed through a week of anguish, coming upon a week of grief and great distress. Surely all has been done that can be done?”

“But you would have justice for your nephew if there has been foul play?”

Mrs Dupreen made a weary gesture of resignation. It was Loudham who took up the question.

“Do you really mean, Mr Carrados, that there is any doubt about the cause?”

“Will you give me my case, please? Thank you.” He opened it and produced a small paper bag. “Now a newspaper, if you will.” He opened the bag and poured out the contents. “You remember stating at the inquest, Mrs Dupreen, that the mushrooms you bought looked rather dry? They were dry, there is no doubt, for they had then been gathered four days. Here are some more under precisely the same conditions. They looked, in point of fact, like these?”

“Yes,” admitted the lady, beginning to regard Carrados with a new and curious interest.

“Dr Slark further stated that the only fungus containing the poison bhurine--the _Amanita_ called the Black Cap, and also by the country folk the Devil’s Scent Bottle--did not assume its forbidding appearance until maturity. He was wrong in one sense there, for experiment proves that if the Black Cap is gathered in its young and deceptive stage and kept, it assumes precisely the same appearance as it withers as if it was ripening naturally. You observe.” He opened a second bag and, shaking out the contents, displayed another little heap by the side of the first. “Gathered four days ago,” he explained.

“Why, they are as black as ink,” commented Loudham. “And the, phew! aroma!”

“One would hardly have got through without you seeing it, Mrs Dupreen?”

“I certainly hardly think so,” she admitted.

“With due allowance for Lackington’s biased opinion I also think that his claim might be allowed. Finally, it is incredible that whoever peeled the mushrooms should have passed one of these. Who was the cook on that occasion, Mrs Dupreen?”

“My maid Hilda. She does all the cooking.”

“The one who admitted me?”

“Yes; she is the only servant I have, Mr Carrados.”

“I should like to have her in, if you don’t mind.”

“Certainly, if you wish it. She is”--Mrs Dupreen felt that she must put in a favourable word before this inexorable man pronounced judgment--“she is a very good, straightforward girl.”

“So much the better.”

“I will----” Mrs Dupreen rose and began to cross the room.

“Ring for her? Thank you,” and whatever her intention had been the lady rang the bell.

“Yes, ma’am?”

A neat, modest-mannered girl, simple and nervous, with a face as full, as clear and as honest as an English apple. “A pity,” thought Mrs Dupreen, “that this confident, suspicious man cannot see her now.”

“Come in, Hilda. This gentleman wants to ask you something.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The round, blue eyes went appealingly to Carrados, fell upon the fungi spread out before her, and then circled the room with an instinct of escape.