In Miss Mack’s voice was the throb of the student before the Creation of the master.
‘I should like this pipe, Miss Jansen, if you ever care to dispose of it!’
The girl was still staring woodenly.
‘It was Orlando Julio, the medieval poisoner,’ she gasped, ‘that Uncle described –’
‘In his seventeenth chapter of The World’s Great Cynics,’ finished Madelyn. ‘I have taken the liberty of reading the chapter in manuscript form. Julio, however, was not the discoverer of the drug. He merely introduced it to the English public. As a matter of fact, it is one of the oldest stimulants of the East. It is easy to assume that it was not as a stimulant that Julio used it, but as a baffling instrument of murder. The mechanism of the pipe was his own invention, of course. The smoker, if not in the secret, would be completely oblivious to his danger. He might even use the pipe in perfect safety – until its lower chamber was loaded!’
Sheriff Peddicord, against the door, mopped his face with his red handkerchief, like a man in a daze. Dr Dench was still studying Miss Mack with his intent frown. Madelyn swerved her angle abruptly.
‘Last night was not the first time the hemp-chamber of Wendell Marsh’s pipe had been charged. We can trace the effect of the drug on his brain for several months – hallucinations, imaginative enemies seeking his life, incipient insanity. That explains his astonishing letter to me. Wendell Marsh was not a man of nine lives, but only one. The perils which he described were merely fantastic figments of the drug. For instance, the episode of the poisoned cherry pie. There was no pie at all served at the table yesterday.
‘The letter to me was not a forgery. Miss Jansen, although you were sincere enough when you pronounced it such. The complete change in your uncle’s handwriting was only another effect of the drug. It was this fact, in the end, which led me to the truth. You did not perceive that the dates of your notes and mine were six months apart! I knew that some terrific mental shock must have occurred in the meantime.
‘And then, too, the ravages of a drug-crazed victim were at once suggested by the curtains of the library. They were not simply torn, but fairly chewed to pieces!’
A sudden tension fell over the room. We shifted nervously, rather avoiding one another’s eyes. Madelyn laid the pipe back on the stand. She was quite evidently in no hurry to continue. It was Truxton again who put the leading question of the moment.
‘If Mr Marsh was killed as you describe, Miss Mack, who killed him?’
Madelyn glanced across at Dr Dench.
‘Will you kindly let me have the red leather book that you took from Mr Marsh’s desk this evening, Doctor?’
The physician met her glance steadily.
‘You think it – necessary?’
‘I am afraid I must insist.’
For an instant Dr Dench hesitated. Then, with a shrug, he reached into a coat pocket and extended the red-bound volume, for which Miss Mack had dispatched me on the fruitless errand to the library. As Madelyn opened it we saw that it was not a printed volume, but filled with several hundred pages of close, cramped writing. Dr Dench’s gaze swerved to Muriel Jansen as Miss Mack spoke.
‘I have here the diary of Wendell Marsh, which shows us that he had been in the habit of seeking the stimulant of Indian hemp, or “hasheesh” for some time, possibly as a result of his retired, sedentary life and his close application to his books. Until his purchase of the Bainford relics, however, he had taken the stimulant in the comparatively harmless form of powdered leaves or “bhang”, as it is termed in the Orient. His acquisition of Julio’s drug-pipe, and an accidental discovery of its mechanism, led him to adopt the compound of hemp and dhatura, prepared for smoking – in India called “charas”. No less an authority than Captain EN Windsor, bacteriologist of the Burmese government, states that it is directly responsible for a large percentage of the lunacy of the Orient. Wendell Marsh, however, did not realise his danger, nor how much stronger the latter compound is than the form of the drug to which he had been accustomed.
‘Dr Dench endeavoured desperately to warn him of his peril, and free him from the bondage of the habit as the diary records, but the victim was too thoroughly enslaved. In fact, the situation had reached a point just before the final climax when it could no longer be concealed. The truth was already being suspected by the older servants. I assume this was why you feared my investigations in the case, Miss Jansen.’
Muriel Jansen was staring at Madelyn in a sort of dumb appeal.
‘I can understand and admire Dr Dench’s efforts to conceal the fact from the public – first, in his supervision of the inquest, which might have stumbled on the truth, and then in his removal of the betraying diary, which I left purposely exposed in the hope that it might inspire such an action. Had it not been removed, I might have suspected another explanation of the case – in spite of certain evidence to the contrary!’
Dr Dench’s face had gone white.
‘God! Miss Mack, do you mean that after all it was not suicide?’
‘It was not suicide,’ said Madelyn quietly. She stepped across toward the opposite door.
‘When I stated that my knowledge that we are not dealing with natural death was shared by another person in this room, I might have added that it was shared
