Excuse me a moment."
He hurried away, and five minutes passed before he came back.
"I 'phoned the office to send some men around to the boats which came
in yesterday. If he was a passenger, some one of the stewards will
recognise his photograph. There were three boats he might have come
on--the _Adriatic_ and _Cecelie_ from Cherbourg, and _La Touraine_
from Havre. There is nothing else that I know of," he added
thoughtfully, "except that Freylinghuisen thinks he has discovered
the nature of the poison. He says it is some very powerful variant of
prussic acid."
"Yes," I said, "I heard him say something of the sort last night."
"I had a talk with him this afternoon about it, and he was quite
learned," Godfrey went on. "This is a great chance for him to get
before the public, and he's making the most of it. I gathered from
what he said that ordinary prussic acid, which is deadly enough,
heaven knows, contains only two per cent. of the poison; while the
strongest solution yet obtained contains only four per cent.
Freylinghuisen says that whoever concocted this particular poison has
evidently discovered a new way of doing it--or rediscovered an old
way--so that it is at least fifty per cent.
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