among us have usually been direct, simple, aboveboard, in keeping
with our democratic and pioneer traditions. The pistol and the
bowie-knife for the individual, the rope and the torch for the
mob, have been the usual instruments of sudden death. But when we
begin to use poisons most artfully compounded in order to hasten
an expected bequest and remove obstacles in its way--well, we are
practising an art that calls up all the memories of sixteenth
century Italy.

"In this beaker," he continued, "I have some of the contents of
the stomach of the unfortunate woman. The coroner's physician has
found that they show traces of morphine. Was the morphine in such
quantities as to be fatal? Without doubt. But equally without
doubt analysis could not discover and prove it in the face of one
inconsistency. The usual test which shows morphine poisoning
failed in this case. The pupils of her eyes were not
symmetrically contracted. In fact they were normal.

"Now, the murderer must have known of this test. This clever
criminal also knew that to be successful in the use of this drug
where others had failed, the drug must be skilfully mixed with
something else. In that first box of capsules there were six. The
druggist compounded them correctly according to the prescription.
But between the time when they came into the house from the
druggist's and the time when she took the first capsule, that
night, someone who had access to the house emptied one capsule of
its harmless contents and refilled it with a deadly dose of
morphine--a white powder which looks just like the powder
already in the capsules.