American Sherlocks by Nick Rennison (reading like a writer .TXT) 📕

He placed the gourd on the edge of the table where we could all see it. I was almost afraid even to look at it.

‘The famous traveller, Sir Robert Schomburgh, 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 Pharmacopoeia as a medicine, though of course it is used in only very minute quantities, as a heart stimulant.’

Craig opened a book to a place he had marked:

‘At least one person in this room will appreciate the local colour of a little incident I am going to read – to illustrate what death from this poison is like. Two natives of the part of the world whence it comes were one day hunting. They were armed with blowpipes 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 blowpipe for his little son. Says to me goodbye 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.”’

We looked at each other, and the horror of the thing sank deep into our minds. Woorali. What was it? There were many travellers in the room who had been in the Orient, home of poisons, and in South America. Which one had run across the poison?

‘Woorali, or curare,’ said Craig slowly, ‘is the well-known poison with which the South American Indians of the upper Orinoco tip their arrows. Its principal ingredient is derived from the Strychnos toxifera tree, which yields also the drug nux vomica.’

A great light dawned on me. I turned quickly to where Vanderdyke was sitting next to Mrs Ralston, and a little behind her. His stony stare and laboured breathing told me that he had read the purport of Kennedy’s actions.

‘For God’s sake, Craig,’ I gasped. ‘An emetic, quick – Vanderdyke.’

A trace of a smile flitted over Vanderdyke’s features, as much as to say that he was beyond our interference.

‘Vanderdyke,’ said Craig, with what seemed to me a brutal calmness, ‘then it was you who were the visitor who last saw Laura Wainwright and John Templeton alive. Whether you shot a dart at them I do not know. But you are the murderer.’

Vanderdyke raised his hand as if to assent. It fell back limp, and I noted the ring of the bluest lapis lazuli.

Mrs Ralston threw herself toward him. ‘Will you not do something? Is there no antidote? Don’t let him die!’ she cried.

‘You are the murderer,’ repeated Kennedy, as if demanding a final answer.

Again the hand moved in confession, and he feebly moved the finger on which shone the ring.

Our attention was centred on Vanderdyke. Mrs Ralston, unobserved, went to the table and picked up the gourd. Before O’Connor could stop her she had rubbed her tongue on the black substance inside. It was only a little bit, for O’Connor quickly dashed it from her lips and threw the gourd through the window, smashing the glass.

‘Kennedy,’ he shouted frantically, ‘Mrs Ralston has swallowed some of it.’

Kennedy seemed so intent on Vanderdyke that I had to repeat the remark.

Without looking up, he said: ‘Oh, one can swallow it – it’s strange, but it is comparatively inert if swallowed even in a pretty good-sized quantity. I doubt if Mrs Ralston ever heard of it before except by hearsay. If she had, she’d have scratched herself with it instead of swallowing it.’

If Craig had been indifferent to the emergency of Vanderdyke before, he was all action now that the confession had been made. In an instant Vanderdyke was stretched on the floor and Craig had taken out the apparatus I had seen during the afternoon.

‘I am prepared for this,’ he exclaimed quickly. ‘Here is the apparatus for artificial respiration. Nott, hold that rubber funnel over his nose, and start the oxygen from the tank. Pull his tongue forward so it won’t fall down his throat and choke him. I’ll work his arms. Walter, make a tourniquet of your handkerchief and put it tightly on the muscles of his left arm. That may keep some of the poison in his arm from spreading into the rest of his body. This is the only antidote known – artificial respiration.’

Kennedy was working feverishly, going through the motions of first aid to a drowned man. Mrs Ralston was on her knees beside Vanderdyke, kissing his hands and forehead whenever Kennedy stopped for a minute, and crying softly.

‘Schuyler, poor boy, I wonder how you could have done it. I was with him that day. We rode up in his car, and as we passed through Williston he said he would stop a minute and wish Templeton luck. I didn’t think it strange, for he said he had nothing any longer against Laura Wainwright, and Templeton only did his duty as a lawyer against us. I forgave John for prosecuting us, but Schuyler didn’t, after all. Oh, my poor boy, why did you do it? We could have gone somewhere else and started all over again – it wouldn’t have been the first time.’

At last came the flutter of an eyelid and a voluntary breath or two. Vanderdyke seemed to realise where he was. With a last supreme effort he raised his hand and drew it slowly across his face. Then he fell back, exhausted by the effort.

But he had at last put himself beyond the reach of the law.