possible for anyone to administer it? It seems to me that he would
have said something, if he had swallowed even the minutest part of
it. He must have known it. Yet apparently he didn't. At least he
said nothing about it--or else Josephson is concealing something."

"Did he swallow it--necessarily?" queried Kennedy, in a tone
calculated to show me that the chemical world, at least, was full
of a number of things, and there was much to learn.

"Well, I suppose if it had been given hypodermically, it would
have a more violent effect," I persisted, trying to figure out a
way that the poison might have been given.

"Even more unlikely," objected Craig, with a delight at
discovering a new mystery that to me seemed almost fiendish. "No,
he would certainly have felt a needle, have cried out and said
something about it, if anyone had tried that. This poisoned needle
business isn't as easy as some people seem to think nowadays."

"Then he might have absorbed it from the water," I insisted,
recalling a recent case of Kennedy's and adding, "by osmosis."

"You saw how difficult it was to dissolve in water," Craig
rejected quietly.

"Well, then," I concluded in desperation. "How could it have been
introduced?"

"I have a theory," was all he would say, reaching for the railway
guide, "but it will take me up to Stratfield to prove it."