Next time the Colonel called on us A.B.C. asked him if he had changed his diet.
“No, Mr. Hawkes, I haven’t,” he replied, “and I may tell you that I’m feeling better and better every day. Don’t you think I’m looking well? I haven’t tasted egg in any form for the past month, nor eaten anything fried or drunk anything worth drinking. But it’s worth it, isn’t it? Look at me! Fit as a fiddle!”
Then he sprang a surprise on us. His nephew, he said, needed a change and was going oft on a West Indies cruise, which would last a month. Rather than stay alone in their house, the Colonel asked us if we would allow him to be our guest during Dr. Badling’s absence.
“But what about your treatment, Colonel, your injections?” A.B.C. asked.
“Oh, Clive’s practically finished with them now,” the old gentleman explained. “He says I shan’t need any more while he’s away. So long as I stick to my diet, he says, I shall be all right.”
So it was arranged that the Colonel should stay with us during his nephew’s journey. The day before he arrived, our housekeeper brought us some information which, though we were careful not to let her suspect this, caused us considerable uneasiness. She said that young Badling had promised several people in the neighborhood — including a bookmaker at Coppsmere with whom he had run up a very large bill — to pay them in full the moment he returned from his cruise. Then it was that A.B.C. made the observation which I have already quoted.
“It’s my opinion, Johnstone,” he said, as soon as the housekeeper had left the room, “that young Dr. Badling is preparing to murder his uncle!”
He pointed out how convenient it would be for the nephew if the death occurred during his absence on the cruise and, even more, if the Colonel were our guest at the time.
“What can he be intending?” I asked. “If he’s given his uncle some slow poison, a post-mortem, with which you’ve threatened young Badling, will undoubtedly reveal it. And he can’t have hired anybody to bump off the Colonel, as if we were living in Mexico or Seattle. And I presume that, apart from eggs, fried food, and strong drink, our guest will eat and drink the same things as ourselves.”
A.B.C. grimly agreed. “And yet I’m as certain as I can be of anything that there’s dirty work on hand. Well, it’s up to us to frustrate it, and the first thing we can do is to make certain that the young doctor does sail. That, at least, ought to relieve us from the necessity of watching for direct attacks on our guest’s life.”
A message from Southampton a day or two later proved that Clive Badling had really left on the cruise and, while A.B.C. took the precaution of instructing the purser to let him know if the youth broke his journey at any port from which he might return secretly to England, I felt sure that there was no chance of this happening.
Clive Badling was playing a deeper game — if he was playing one at all.
A fortnight passed without any incident suggesting that the Colonel’s life was threatened. He fitted easily in our daily round and when A.B.C. had to go up to London, I always stayed behind to guard the old gentleman. But I had no idea what I was guarding him against; nor, I am certain, had A.B.C. There were moments when we thought that our suspicions of the nephew must be groundless; still, we decided not to leave any opening for foul play.
When, at the end of this fortnight, the annual Lakdoo dinner fell due, at which the Colonel and the two other survivors of the affair at the fort were to celebrate their escape,
A.B.C and I cajoled him into allowing us to relieve him of the duty of ordering the menu — a duty which devolved on him every three years.
“We can thus make certain, Johnstone,” A.B.C. said to me, “that there’s no monkeying with his food. Moreover, since the dinner is to take place, as usual, at the Café Napoleon, I’ll make it my business to instruct my friend the manager to detail his best cook and most trustworthy waiters to prepare and serve the meal. I will thus insure that the food shall be of such a nature that no harm can possibly befall Colonel Badling. It is true that he insists on sharing the bottle of port which is the main feature of this annual reunion; but there again I’ll make sure that the excellent cellars of the Café Napoleon are secure against any attempt to tamper with the wine.”
“But do you suppose that the dinner provides any opportunity for Dr. Badling to harm his uncle?” I asked.
“Eggs, my boy! Eggs! That’s where the danger might lie,” was A.B.C.’s answer.
I begged him to explain.
“It’s mere conjecture on my part,” he went on, “but, frankly, I can see no other possibility. Let us suppose that Dr. Badling has used all those dozens of eggs which he bought from our housekeeper to produce a solution with which he had injected his uncle. We know that no eggs have been eaten in that house since the Colonel went on his diet; yet his nephew bought them in large quantities and has certainly made some use of them. Suppose that he’s used them for the injections.”
“What then?” I asked.
“You’re probably aware, my friend, that certain people are naturally sensitive to various foodstuffs, such as crab, and, if they eat these, they immediately come out with nettlerash or some such complaint. This abnormal sensitiveness is a well-known medical phenomenon.”
“Yes, my brother-in-law gets ill if he eats strawberries,” I said.
“Exactly,” A.B.C. commented. “Of course, it’s possible to render such people insensitive to the effects by giving them a course of suitable doses of an extract of the noxious substance. If, for example, you normally get nettlerash from eating crab, doses of crab-extract will make you immune.”
“That’s all very well,” I said, “but I find it difficult to imagine that Dr. Badling has been trying to make his uncle immune from the bad effects of eating eggs by giving him doses of egg-extract. I thought we were agreed that, if possible, he wished to take his uncle’s life, not to preserve it.”
“One thing at a time,” Hawkes said. “The treatment works both ways. Not only can you render a sufferer immune by doses of the extract, but you can also do the opposite. You can give a number of very minute doses of any substance to a normal person and thus render him so sensitive that, if he exposes himself to the smallest trace of that substance, lie’ll have a very severe and possibly a fatal reaction.”
I stared at him. “You mean that this young man has injected his uncle with minute doses of egg so that, if the Colonel eats an egg, he’ll die?”
“No need to eat a whole egg; it would be enough for the Colonel, if our suspicion is correct, to swallow even the smallest fragment of an egg or anything prepared with eggs.”
“But in that case,” I argued, “why should Dr. Badling have warned him so urgently against eating eggs or anything prepared with eggs? It doesn’t make sense, A.B.C., does it? Suppose, for example, the Colonel does eat an egg, and dies — well, we shouldn’t have much difficulty in proving that his nephew murdered him, should we?”
“That’s the difficulty,” A.B.C. agreed. “I’ve never before met a prospective murderer who warned his victim and his victim’s friends of the means he intended to adopt. Still, I sense danger. You may be quite certain that I’ll insist that no eggs shall appear in any shape or form on the menu of this Lakdoo dinner. And, to make assurance doubly sure, I’ve persuaded the Colonel to let the dinner take place in one of the public rooms of the restaurant, where I shall book an adjoining table for yourself. Unfortunately, I have to lecture that evening to the Royal Society.”