Read Online Puzzle of the Silver Persian by Stuart Palmer - Free Book Online Page B

policy of Lord Duggat, the recently appointed commissioner. He had served his six months’ uniform service as a Bobby, passed detective examinations with flying colors, and now rated the sergeants stripes that Cannon himself had earned only after six years of intense struggle. Cannon secretly considered the introduction of “kid-glove ’tecs” as an effort on the part of the government to find a place for the younger sons to whom the colonies, the army, and the merchant marine were no longer open. He was doubly suspicious of Secker because the young man had admittedly been to Cambridge. He had been sent down, but still he had been there.
    “Right-ho,” said John Secker. His voice was extremely casual, but he moved with alacrity.
    “We may as well make an attempt to find out where the johnny got his poison,” Cannon volunteered as he led the way down the corridor.
    “You don’t think he brought it with him from the States, then?”
    Cannon mellowed a bit. It pleased him to have such an excellent opportunity of demonstrating his flair for sarcasm. “Not,” he said, “unless Peter Noel knew beforehand that on this voyage he would meet a girl who would move heaven and earth, as her roommate says she did, to make him marry her just because he compromised her in the blanket locker.”
    Sergeant Secker said nothing. Cannon went on. “We can bank on it that Noel provided himself with the cyanide—which is what the police surgeon is sure was used, from the smell—in order to be able to cheat the hangman in case he was nabbed. It struck me that just possibly the ship’s doctor—”
    They were descending the main staircase, near the open door of the pantry whence issued delectable smells of coffee. The chief inspector stopped before a door marked “Doctor’s Office” and hammered with his fist.
    There was no answer. He knocked again, and finally tried the knob and found that the door swung inward.
    “Anyone here?”
    There was a sleepy answer from the cabin beyond, and finally an inner door opened, and Dr. Waite’s bald head appeared, his eyes red-rimmed. He was clutching a flannel robe around his mauve pajamas.
    “We’ll have a look at your medicine cabinet,” he was told. The chief inspector walked over to the cabinet which loomed between the two portholes and opened the glass door. A triple rack of neatly labelled bottles faced him.
    The cryptic symbols meant nothing to Cannon. “Make a note to discover if Noel had any knowledge of pharmacy or chemistry,” he ordered. The sergeant was already writing busily.
    Dr. Waite’s teeth chattered audibly behind them. “Where’s your cyanide?” Cannon demanded.
    Dr. Waite wanted to know which cyanide. “Cyanide of potassium, I suppose,” Cannon told him testily. The doctor pointed to a slender bottle near the end of the second shelf. The chief inspector took it gently in his thick pink fingers. It was full to the brim.
    Waite was apologizing. “You don’t think that I—that this was—naturally, we keep a complete pharmacopoeia on board, but—”
    The chief inspector took the bottle, removed the glass stopper, and sniffed gingerly. “You are prepared to swear this stuff is potassium cyanide?”
    Dr. Waite pointed to the neat symbols, “KCN,” and grinned feebly. “If you’re in doubt, you might taste it.”
    His mouth dropped when he saw Cannon wet his finger and touch a bit of the dull white powder to his lips. “Look out, man!” The sergeant kept his look of mild interest.
    Cannon smiled and handed back the bottle. “Epsom salts,” he decided.
    Waite, horror-struck, sniffed. Then, very amazed, he tasted. It was all too true.
    He reached for a lower shelf and brought up a much larger bottle bearing a characteristic label. It was about half full. “You mean, somebody stole the cyanide and filled up the bottle with this?”
    The chief inspector was busily writing in his own notebook. He nodded wearily. “Are you in the custom of leaving this place