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"Perhaps I was a little hasty," Godfrey admitted, and I suspected that, whatever his thoughts, he had made up his mind to keep them to himself. "I'm not going to theorise until I've got something to start with. The facts seem to point to suicide; but if he swallowed prussic acid, where's the bottle? He didn't swallow that too, did he?" "Maybe we'll find it in his clothes," suggested Simmonds.
On this subject, we have the unanimous opinion of all medical men; the following being specimens. A distinguished medical writer thus states the case: "Every physician knows that the agreeable sensations that tempt to the use of tobacco are caused by nicotine, which is a rank poison, as much so as prussic acid or arsenic.
The sloe, as well as the cherry, and all other plants of its tribe, contains in it a portion of prussic acid; but the quantity is so minute, that there can be no injury derived from the use of either the leaves or fruit of most species.
This conjecture is confirmed by the testimony of the ostler, who, after peeping through the keyhole, assures me that he distinctly saw Professor Nogo on his knees, holding forth a small bottle of prussic acid, to which the animal, who was crouched beneath an arm-chair, obstinately declined to smell.
In her reeling brain kaleidoscopic images danced; her father's face, the lateen sail of fishing boats rocking on blue billows, white oxen browsing amid purple iris clusters; she heard her mother's voice, her brother's gay laugh; she smelled the prussic acid fragrance of the vivid oleanders, then over all, like tongues of devouring flames, flickered "Ricordo."
"But there is another peculiarity of this family of trees which is not so innocent, and that is that in the fruit-kernel, and also in the leaves, there is a deadly poison called prussic acid." "O h!" exclaimed the children, drawing back from the trees as though they expected to be poisoned on the spot.
"Who is talking of prussic acid and poisoning?" exclaimed the public prosecutor, running with an unsteady step from one extremity of the table to the other, "who has been poisoned? I am the public prosecutor, I am the only one here who has any power to start an investigation. Have they had an autopsy? Where did they find it? Buried in the fields or the woods, or floating on the river?"
In removing the box the parlour-maid accidentally upset it, and before she could gather all the violets up her ladyship's little Pomeranian dog snapped up one and ate it. It was dead in six minutes' time! The sweets were simply loaded with prussic acid.
It is even possible that, if that feeling had not possessed me, I should have run up sooner to her room and might have prevented her drinking the prussic acid. But I just couldn't do it; it would have been like chasing a scrap of paper an occupation ignoble for a grown man. And, as it began, so that matter has remained. I didn't care whether she had come out of that bedroom or whether she hadn't.
The most deadly poison may be chemically undistinguishable from substances which are perfectly innocent. Prussic acid, we are told, is formed of the same elements, combined in the same proportions, as gum-arabic. What that belief is for which the fruits speak thus so positively, it is less easy to define. Religion from the beginning of time has expanded and changed with the growth of knowledge.
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