The Roman hat mystery A problem in deduction
case, my boys, was zero. And the M.E.’s not exactly a novice either
when it comes to chemical analysis. So we surrendered the problem to
our fountain-head of learning. Let him spout his own story.”
Dr. Thaddeus Jones cleared his throat forbiddingly. “Thank you,
my friend, for a most dramatic introduction,” he said in his deep
lumbering voice. “Yes, Inspector, the remains were turned over to me,
and in all seriousness, I want to say here and now that my discovery
was the most startling the Toxicologist’s office has made in fifteen
years!”
“My, my!” murmured Queen, taking a pinch of snuff. “I’m beginning to
respect the mentality of our friend the murderer. So many things point
to the unusual lately! And what did you find, Doctor?”
“I took it for granted that Prouty and the Medical Examiner had done
the preliminaries very well,” began Dr. Jones, crossing his bony knees.
“They generally do. And so, before doing anything else, I analyzed for
the obscure poisons. Obscure, that is to say, from the standpoint of
the criminal user. To show you how minutely I searched—I even thought
of that favorite stand-by of our friends the fiction-writers: _curare_,
the South American toxin which makes the grade in four out of five
detective stories. But even that sadly abused member of the toxic
family disappointed me....”
Ellery leaned back and laughed. “If you’re referring in a mildly
satirical way to my profession, Dr. Jones, let me inform you that I
have never used _curare_ in any of my novels.”
The toxicologist’s eyes twinkled. “So you’re one of them, too,
eh? Queen, old man,” he added dolorously, turning to the Inspector,
who was thoughtfully chewing on a piece of French pastry, “allow me to
offer you my condolences.... At any rate, gentlemen, let me explain
that in the case of rare poisons we can generally come to a definite
conclusion without much trouble—that is, rare poisons that are in the
pharmacopœia. Of course, there are any number of rare poisons of which
we have no knowledge whatever—Eastern drugs particularly.
“Well, to make a long story short, I found myself faced with the
unpleasant conclusion that I was up a tree.” Dr. Jones chuckled in
reminiscence. “It wasn’t a pleasant conclusion. The poison I analyzed
had certain properties which were vaguely familiar, as Prouty has said,
and others which didn’t jibe at all. I spent most of yesterday evening
mulling over my retorts and test-tubes, and late last night I suddenly
got the answer.”
Ellery and Queen sat up straight and Dr. Prouty relaxed in his chair
with a sigh, reaching for a second cup of coffee. The toxicologist
uncrossed his legs, his voice booming more terrifyingly than ever.
“The poison that killed your victim, Inspector, is known as tetra ethyl
lead!”
To a scientist this announcement, in Dr. Jones’ profoundest tones,
might have carried a dramatic quality. To the Inspector it meant less
than nothing. As for Ellery, he murmured, “Sounds like a mythological
monster to me!”
Dr. Jones went on, smiling. “So it hasn’t impressed you much, eh?
But let me tell you a little about tetra ethyl lead. It is almost
colorless—to be more exact, it resembles chloroform in physical
appearance. Point number one. Point number two—it has an odor—faint,
to be sure—but distinctly like that of ether. Point number three—it is
fearfully potent. So potent—but let me illustrate just what this
devilishly powerful chemical substance will do to living tissue.”
By this time the toxicologist had gained the entire attention of his
audience.
“I took a healthy rabbit, of the sort we use for experiment, and
painted—just painted, mind you—the tender area behind the creature’s
ear with an undiluted dose of the stuff. Remember, this was not an
internal injection. It was merely a painting of the skin. It would have
to be absorbed through the dermis before it reached the blood-stream.
I watched the rabbit for an hour—and after that I didn’t have to watch
him any more. He was as dead as any dead rabbit I ever saw.”
“That doesn’t seem so powerful to me, Doctor,” protested the Inspector.
“It doesn’t, eh? Well, take my word for it that it’s extraordinary.
For a mere daubing of whole, healthy skin—I tell you, I was astounded.
If the skin had an incision of some sort, or if the poison were
administered internally, that would be a different story. You
can imagine, therefore, what happened to Field’s insides when he
_swallowed_ the stuff—and he swallowed plenty!”
Ellery’s brow was wrinkled in thought. He began to polish the lenses of
his pince-nez.
“And that isn’t all,” resumed Dr. Jones. “As far as I know—and I have
been in the service of the city for God knows how many years, and I’ve
not kept uninformed about the progress of my science in other parts of
the world, either—as far as I know, tetra ethyl lead has never before
been used for criminal purposes!”
The Inspector drew up, startled. “That’s saying something, Doctor!” he
muttered. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. That’s why I’m so keenly interested.”
“Just how long would it take for this poison to kill a man, Doctor?”
asked Ellery slowly.
Dr. Jones grimaced. “That’s something I can’t answer definitely,
for the very good reason that to my knowledge no human being has ever
died of its effects before. But I can make a fairly good guess. I can’t
conceive of Field having lived more than from fifteen to twenty minutes
at the utmost after having taken the poison internally.”
The silence that followed was broken by a cough from Queen. “On the
other hand, Doctor, this very strangeness of the poison should make it
fairly easy to trace. What, would you say, is its commonest source?
Where does it come from? How would I go about getting it if I wanted
some for a criminal purpose and didn’t want to leave a trail?”
A gaunt smile lit up the features of the toxicologist. “The job of
tracing this stuff, Inspector,” he said fervently, “I’ll leave to
you. You can have it. Tetra ethyl lead, as far as I’ve been able
to determine—remember, it is almost entirely new to us—occurs most
commonly in certain petroleum products. I tinkered around quite a
bit before I found the easiest way of making it in quantity. You’ll
never guess how it’s done. It can be extracted from common, ordinary,
everyday gasoline!”
The two Queens exclaimed under their breaths. “Gasoline!” cried the
Inspector. “Why—how on earth could a man trace that?”
“That’s the point,” answered the toxicologist. “I could go to the
corner gas-station, fill up the tank of my car, run it home, extract
some of the gasoline from the tank, go into my laboratory and distill
the tetra ethyl lead in remarkably little time with remarkably little
effort!”
“Doesn’t that imply, Doctor,” put in Ellery hopefully, “that the
murderer of Field had some laboratory experience—knew something about
chemical analysis, and all that sort of rot?”
“No, it doesn’t. Any man with a home-brew ‘still’ in his house
could distill that poison without leaving a trace. The beauty of the
process is that the tetra ethyl lead in the gasoline has a higher
boiling-point than any other of the fluid’s constituents. All you have
to do is distill everything out up to a certain temperature, and
what’s left is this poison.”
The Inspector took a pinch of snuff with trembling fingers. “All I
can say is—I take my hat off to the murderer,” he muttered. “Tell
me—Doctor—wouldn’t a man have to know quite a bit about toxicology
to possess such knowledge? How could he ever know this without some
special interest—and therefore training—in the subject?”
Dr. Jones snorted. “Inspector, I’m surprised at you. Your question is
already answered.”
“How? What do you mean?”
“Haven’t I just told you how to do it? And if you heard about the
poison from a toxicologist, couldn’t you make some provided you had
the ‘still’? You would require no knowledge except the boiling-point
of tetra ethyl lead. Get along with you, Queen! You haven’t a chance
in the world of tracing the murderer through the poison. In all
probability he overheard a conversation between two toxicologists, or
even between two medical men who had heard about the stuff. The rest
was easy. I’m not saying this is so. The man might be a chemist, at
that. But I’m concerned only in giving you the possibilities.”
“I suppose it was administered in whiskey, eh, Doctor?” asked Queen
abstractedly.
“No doubt about it,” returned the toxicologist. “The stomach showed
a large whiskey content. Certainly, it would be an easy way for the
murderer to slip it over on his victim. With the whiskey you get
nowadays, most of it smells etherized, anyway. And besides, Field
probably had it down before he realized anything was wrong—if he did at
all.”
“Wouldn’t he taste the stuff?” asked Ellery wearily.
“I’ve never tasted it, young man, so I can’t say definitely,” answered
Dr. Jones, a trifle tartly. “But I doubt whether he would—sufficiently
to alarm him, at any rate. Once he had it down it wouldn’t make any
difference.”
Queen turned to Prouty, whose cigar had gone out. He had fallen into a
hearty doze. “Say, Doc!”
Prouty opened his eyes sleepily. “Where are my slippers—I can’t ever
seem to find my slippers, damn it!”
Despite the tension of the moment, there was a spontaneous roar of
amusement at the expense of the Assistant Medical Examiner. When he had
come to with sufficient thoroughness to understand what he had said,
he joined the chuckling group and said, “Just goes to prove that I’d
better be going home, Queen. What did you want to know?”
“Tell me,” said Queen, still shaking, “what did you get from your
analysis of the whiskey?”
“Oh!” Prouty sobered instantly. “The whiskey in the flask was as fine
as any I’ve ever tested—and I’ve been doing nothing but testing booze
for years now. It was the poison in the liquor on his breath that made
me think at first that Field had drunk rotten booze. The Scotch and rye
that you sent me in bottles from Field’s apartment were also of the
very highest quality. Probably the flask’s contents came from the same
place as the bottled stuff. In fact, I should say that both samples
were imported goods. I haven’t come across domestic liquor of that
calibre ever since the War—that is, except for the pre-War stuff that
was stored away.... And I suppose Velie communicated my report to you
that the ginger ale is okay.”
Queen nodded. “Well, that seems to settle it,” he said heavily. “It
looks as if we’re up against a blank wall on this tetra ethyl lead
business. But just to make sure, Doc—work along with the professor
here and try to locate a possible leak somewhere in the distribution
of the poison. You fellows know more about that than anybody I could
put on the case. It’s just a stab in the dark and probably nothing will
come of it.”
“There’s no question about it,” murmured Ellery. “A novelist should
stick to his last.”
* * * * *
“I think,” remarked Ellery eagerly, after the two doctors had gone,
“that I’ll amble down to my bookseller for that Falconer.” He rose and
began a hasty search for his coat.
“Here!” bellowed the Inspector, pulling him down into a chair. “Nothing
doing. That blasted book of yours won’t run away. I want you to sit
here and keep my headache company.”
Ellery nestled into the leather cushions with a sigh. “Just when I
get to feeling that all investigations into the foibles of the human
mind are useless and a waste of time, my worthy sire puts the onus of
thought upon me again. Heigh-ho! What’s on the menu?”
“I’m not putting any onus on you at all,” growled Queen. “And stop
using such big words. I’m dizzy enough. What I want you to do is help
me go over this confounded mess of a case and see—well, what we can
see.”