of giving advice in money matters and solving the problems of lovers.  I suspect that at times Mr. Jameson has thought that I was demented, but I had to resort to many and various expedients to collect the specimens of hair which I wanted.  From the police, who used Mr. Lawton’s valet, I received some hair from his head.  Here is another specimen from each of the advertisers, Hata, the Swami, the Pandit, and the Guru.  There is just one of these specimens which corresponds in every particular of colour, thickness, and texture with the hair found so tightly grasped in Miss Gilbert’s hand.”

As Craig said this I could feel a sort of gasp of astonishment from our little audience.  Still he was not quite ready to make his disclosure.

“Lest I should be prejudiced,” he pursued evenly, “by my own rather strong convictions, and in order that I might examine the samples without fear or favour, I had one of my students at the laboratory take the marked hairs, mount them, number them, and put in numbered envelopes the names of the persons who furnished them.  But before I open the envelope numbered the same as the slide which contains the hair which corresponds precisely with that hair found in Miss Gilbert’s hand—­and it is slide No. 2—–­” said Kennedy, picking out the slide with his finger and moving it on the table with as much coolness as if he were moving a chessman on a board instead of playing in the terrible game of human life, “before I read the name I have still one more damning fact to disclose.”

Craig now had us on edge with excitement, a situation which I sometimes thought he enjoyed more keenly than any other in his relentless tracing down of a criminal.

“What was it that caused Miss Gilbert’s death?” asked Kennedy.  “The coroner’s physician did not seem to be thoroughly satisfied with the theory of physical violence alone.  Nor did I. Some one, I believe, exerted a peculiar force in order to get her into his power.  What was that force?  At first I thought it might have been the hackneyed knockout drops, but tests by the coroner’s physician eliminated that.  Then I thought it might be one of the alkaloids, such as morphine, cocaine, and others.  But it was not any of the usual things that was used to entice her away from her family and friends.  From tests that I have made I have discovered the one fact necessary to complete my case, the drug used to lure her and against which she fought in deadly struggle.”

He placed a test tube in a rack before us.  “This tube,” he continued, “contains one of the most singular and, among us, least known of the five common narcotics of the world—­tobacco, opium, coca, betel nut, and hemp.  It can be smoked, chewed, used as a drink, or taken as a confection.  In the form of a powder it is used by the narghile smoker.  As a liquid it can be taken as an oily fluid or in alcohol.  Taken in any of these forms, it literally makes the nerves walk, dance, and run.