This asphyxia is what puzzled you,
Leslie."
He reached over and took a white mouse from the huge box on the
corner of the table.
"Let me show you what I have found," he said. "I am now going to
inject a little of the blood serum of the murdered man into this
white mouse."
He took a needle and injected some of a liquid which he had
isolated. The mouse did not even wince, so lightly did he touch
it. But as we watched, its life seemed gently to ebb away, without
pain, without struggle. Its breath simply seemed to stop.
Next he took the gourd which we had brought and with a knife
scraped off just the minutest particle of the black, licorice-like
stuff that incrusted it. He dissolved the particle in some
alcohol, and with a sterilized needle repeated his experiment on a
second mouse. The effect was precisely similar to that produced by
the blood on the first.
I was intent on what Craig was doing when Dr. Leslie broke in with
a question. "May I ask," he queried, "whether, admitting that the
first mouse died at least apparently in the same manner as the
second, you have proved that the poison is the same in both cases?
And if it is the same, can you show that it affects human beings
in the same way, that enough of it has been discovered in the
blood of Mendoza to have caused his death? In other words, I want
the last doubt set aside.
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