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I asked, fingering them. "I've never seen anything like them." "Not beads at all," he replied. "They are Hindu prayer-beans, sometimes called ruttee, jequirity beans, seeds of the plant known to science as Abrus precatorius. They produce a deadly poison abrin." He slipped four or five of them into his pocket. Then he resumed his cursory search of the room.
The flying pieces of glass injected the poison as by a myriad of hypodermic needles the highly poisonous toxin of abrin, product of the jequirity, which is ordinarily destroyed in the stomach but acts powerfully if injected into the blood. Shirley died of jequirity poisoning, or rather of the alkaloid in the bean. It has been used in India for criminal poisoning for ages.
My mind instantly reverted to the strange woman across the hall, the photograph in his luggage, and the broken necklace in the jewel-case. Kennedy continued looking at the remainder of the jequirity beans and a liquid he had developed from some of them. Finally, with a glance at his watch, he placed a tube of the liquid in a leather case in his pocket.
Kennedy immediately set to work studying the scrap of paper and the cipher message he had copied, while I stifled my impatience as best I could. I could do nothing but reflect on the possibility of what a jealous woman might do. Mrs. Rogers had given us one example. Did the same explanation shed any light on the mystery of the nautch- girl and the jequirity bean sent to Shirley?
In spite of my horror at the diabolical plot that had been aimed at Shirley, my mind ran along, keenly endeavoring to piece together the scattered fragments of the case. Some one, of course, had sent the package while he was out and had it placed in his room. Had it been the same person who had sent the single jequirity bean?
"You remember," she cried, breathlessly, "you said that a jequirity bean was sent to Captain Shirley?" "Yes," encouraged Kennedy. "Well, after you left, I was thinking about it. That Kalia Dass used to wear a necklace of them, but she didn't have it on to-day. I began thinking about it. While she was talking to the swami I went over. I've noticed how careful she always is of her hand-bag.
Late though it was, in the laboratory Kennedy set to work examining the dust which he had swept up by the vacuum cleaner, as well as the jequirity beans he had taken from Mrs. Anthony's jewel-case. I do not know how much sleep he had, but I managed to snatch a few hours' rest, and early in the morning I found him at work again, examining the cipher message which he had copied.
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