“Queer he’d waste ’em that way,” observed Donovan.  “Usually they can’t get enough to smoke.”

“He didn’t exactly waste them,” said the colonel grimly, as he looked at the divided but otherwise perfect cigarettes in his hand.

“What do you call it then?” demanded the headquarters detective.

“Well, I think he was looking for something in the cigarettes—­and—­he found it.”

“What do you mean?” asked Dr. Warren.

“Wait.  Maybe I can show you.”

Colonel Ashley carefully gathered up all the cigarettes in the cell, a number of them being perfect.  With them, and the black butts, as well as the broken paper tubes, he moved over to the small table in the cell, and spread them out.

Donovan reached under the colonel’s arm and broke open one of the whole cigarettes.  “I don’t see—­” he began.  “For the love of Mike look at this!” he suddenly exclaimed.  “There’s a needle in this dope stick!”

“And, if you value your life don’t touch it!” cried the colonel.  “That’s what I was looking for!  Don’t so much as scratch yourself the hundredth part of an inch or—­ Well, you saw Singa Phut,” he ended grimly.

“Poisoned needle, Colonel?” asked Dr. Warren, as he shoved the cigarette Donovan had broken toward the middle of the table.

“That’s what I suspect.  If we had a cat now or a rat—­”

“Easy enough to get a rat,” interposed the warden.  “There’s always some of the beasts in the traps we set about.  We catch ’em alive.  I don’t like poison.  Here, Riley, go and see if you can find a rat in one of the traps.  What you going to do, Colonel?  Try it on him?”

“If you have one, yes.  You get my idea, I guess.  Some one of Singa Phut’s Indian friends, knowing he would rather go out this way than pay the penalty of his crime, brought in a package of his favorite cigarettes.

“In two, three, or in perhaps more of the ‘dope sticks,’ as my friend Donovan calls them, he shoved a fine needle, the tip of which was dipped in some swift, subtle Indian poison, the secret of which these two alone, perhaps, knew.

“With the cigarettes in his possession it was easy enough for Singa Phut to smoke some and extract a needle from another.  It was probably marked in some secret way.  More than one needle was sent to guard against failure.  But the first one must have worked.  I’d like to find it.”

“I’ll have the cell swept for you,” promised the warden as his deputy went off to look for a rat.  A keeper was summoned with a broom, and brushed out the cell.  It did not take long, for it was very clean.  Most of the debris was cigarette ash and scraps of paper and tobacco.  And it was in this debris, carefully poked over with a lead pencil, that a needle was found.

Colonel Ashley, using extreme care, laid the two together, after an examination of the other unbroken cigarettes had disclosed the fact that none of them concealed anything.