THE LEAD POISONER


It was a gruesome recital and I was glad to leave the baths
finally with Kennedy. Josephson was quite evidently relieved at
the attitude Craig had taken toward the coroner's conclusion that
Minturn had been shocked to death. As far as I could see, however,
it added to rather than cleared up the mystery.

Craig went directly uptown to his laboratory, in contrast with our
journey down, in abstracted silence, which was his manner when he
was trying to reason out some particularly knotty problem.

As Kennedy placed the white crystals which he had scraped off the
electrodes of the tub on a piece of dark paper in the laboratory,
he wet the tip of his finger and touched just the minutest grain
to his tongue.

The look on his face told me that something unexpected had
happened. He held a similar minute speck of the powder out to me.

It was an intensely bitter taste and very persistent, for even
after we had rinsed out our mouths it seemed to remain, clinging
persistently to the tongue.

He placed some of the grains in some pure water. They dissolved
only slightly, if at all. But in a tube in which he mixed a little
ether and chloroform they dissolved fairly readily.

Next, without a word, he poured just a drop of strong sulphuric