“You don’t think that the port is the danger?” I asked. “Perhaps it’s unwise for the Colonel to drink it after he’s been teetotal so long.”
“So long?” sneered A.B.C. “Do you call a couple of months long? No, if the port isn’t tampered with, its alcoholic qualities ought to be quite harmless to so seasoned a drinker as our friend.”
“Possibly young Badling’s arranged with one of the others to do the old man in,” I suggested. “Or he’s got hold of a waiter.”
“Goodness only knows!” Hawkes struck his forehead with his hand. “Where does the danger lie? I can’t see it, yet my instinct tells me that it exists!”
Naturally we said nothing to Colonel Badling about our fears. When the day of the Lakdoo dinner came, we drove him up to town and, after Hawkes went off to the Royal Society to give his lecture, I accepted the old gentleman’s invitation to meet his friends. The Cabinet Minister turned out to be a tall, thin individual with a bald head, an abnormally high forehead and collar, and the most pompous possible flow of speech. He talked to us almost without ceasing for half an hour, telling us his personal views about the foreign situation and the difficulty of persuading his colleagues in the Cabinet to take his advice. I felt certain that this man at least was not to be suspected of a share in any attempt on the Colonel’s life; he was far too self-centered to be a willing participant in murder, while nobody but a lunatic would dream of trying to use him as an unconscious confederate — he would certainly want to talk at the moment when he ought to do the job!
The other Lakdoo survivor, a pleasant red-faced General, was much too slow on the uptake to be of any assistance, conscious or unconscious, to a murderer.
As it turned out, I had known the waiters for years; they were all above suspicion. What is more, the manager beckoned me aside and whispered to me that he had personally made sure that A.B.C.’s instructions not to use any egg in any form in cooking the meal had been carried out.
At last the three old gentlemen sat down to dine, and I took my seat at a neighboring table. The annual Lakdoo dinner began. I am bound to say that, sitting there and watching them, with the horrible feeling that murder was lurking somewhere near, I had no appetite to eat my own meal.
A.B.C. had ordered them an excellent dinner, and they evidently were enjoying it. Try as I might, I could not see any loophole for an attempt on Colonel Badling’s life. The melon, the borscht, the sole, the woodcock, the ice, and the ripe Stilton cheese — they suggested indigestion possibly, but not poison. Then the great moment of the anniversary arrived, and the manager himself brought in a decanter of port, the same vintage as that bottle which these three men had drunk so many years before in the little Tibetan fort, while they waited for death.
The Colonel happened to catch my eye as the waiter served him, and he raised his glass in greeting to me. The three old gentlemen solemnly shook hands and, with enormous solemnity, held their glasses to the light, admired the color of the old port, and prepared to take the first ceremonious sip.
At this moment the dreadful thing happened for which I had been waiting. The moment the Colonel swallowed the first drop of port, he seemed to catch his breath and the glass dropped from his hand, splashing his shirt-front and the tablecloth. His face grew livid; he gave an inarticulate cry and slumped over in his seat, unconscious.
I jumped to my feet, careless of the damage I did to the plates and glasses on my table, and rushed towards him.
Quick as I was, somebody was before me and I saw A.B.C., his coattails still flying in the breeze of his hurried entry into the room, bending over the prostrate man. In my friend’s hand was a syringe, and I saw him place it against the Colonel’s arm and press it.
Soon, to my enormous relief, the Colonel seemed to come out of his swoon. His breathing became normal and before very long he was able to sit up. With the assistance of his friends and the waiters we led him to a small room on an upper floor of the restaurant and, watched by A.B.C. and by a doctor who happened to be dining in the place, he came round completely.
When at last he was himself again, A.B.C. laid a friendly hand on his arm and addressed him softly, but not so softly that we others could not hear what he said. “My dear Colonel,” he began, “I have to make a rather distressing statement to you. I fear that your nephew, to whom you have been so kind in so many ways, has tried to murder you.”
The poor old gentleman protested, but A.B.C. continued inexorably, “I know that you’re reluctant to hear an ill report of anybody, least of all of Dr. Badling, but I am perfectly certain of what I say. I must also tell you that I warned your nephew some time ago that, should any accident befall you, I should make it my business to investigate the circumstances and, if suspicion pointed to him, to see that he was brought to book. I’ve no doubt whatever that what I said frightened him: you may recall that you recovered rather quickly from the illness from which you were then suffering. But, assuming — as I did and do — that he has designs on your life, it seemed clear to me that he would still endeavor to find some means of killing you without the danger of being detected. I have now discovered his method.
“He is at present, as we know, many thousands of miles away. And he has been gone a fortnight; consequently, he must have laid his plans before he left. I’ll tell you quite simply, Colonel, what I think he did; he injected a solution of egg into your veins, in order that the mere contact with egg in any shape or form would be sufficient to poison you.”
“But I’ve eaten no eggs since he went,” the Colonel protested.
“Naturally,” said A.B.C. “Had you died after eating an egg or anything prepared with eggs, it wouldn’t have been very difficult to guess what had happened. He was subtler than that.
“He knew that you would drink your usual glasses of port at this annual Lakdoo dinner. I knew it too, but I confess that the significance of the fact escaped me until I was in the middle of a discourse to the Royal Society this evening. My subject being the future development of television, I can’t quite see why I should have hit on the solution of the puzzle during my speech: my subconscious mind, however, did so and that’s why I disconcerted my learned brethren by dashing from the rostrum and driving here at full speed.”
“But the syringe, A.B.C.?” I said.
“Oh, I’ve had that by me for weeks now, ever since the Colonel came to stay with us. It’s filled with adrenalin, which acts as a specific against all forms of anaphylactic shock, which, Colonel, is the technical name given to the results of contact with a substance to which one may be, or may be made, sensitive — in your case, eggs.”
“I’ve eaten no eggs, no eggs in any form,” the Colonel repeated.
“That’s where my subconscious mind came in so handy,” said A.B.C. “It suddenly reminded me — while, I repeat, I was addressing the Royal Society on a very different subject — that most shippers of port clarify that beverage with eggshells! This remote contact was sufficient to have killed you, thanks to your charming nephew’s previous injections into you of a solution of egg.”
Old Beetle’s Crime{Copyright, 1928, by Cyril Alexander Barber}
by Alex. Barber
Someone in a sportive moment had called him Old Beetle, and the name had stuck because it was so apt. The shell-like back of his ancient frock-coat, the unobtrusive way he had with him, his quick gliding movement about the office on shuffling feet that seemed scarcely to leave the floor — all these things fitted in with the idea of a harmless old insect.