I could not, it turned out, have done anything better, for it seemed to be the gossip of the Broadway cafes and cabarets that Mansfield had been plunging rather deeply lately and had talked many of his acquaintances into joining him in a pool, either outright or on margins.  It seemed to be a safe bet that not only Lewis and Doctor Murray had joined him, but that Madeline Hargrave and Mina Leitch, who had had a successful season and some spare thousands to invest, might have gone in, too.  So far the fortunes of the stock-market had not smiled on Mansfield’s schemes, and, I reflected, it was not impossible that what might be merely an incident to a man like Mansfield could be very serious to the rest of them.

It was the middle of the afternoon when I returned to the laboratory with my slender budget of news.  Craig was quite interested in what I had to say, even pausing for a few moments in his work to listen.

In several cages I saw that he had a number of little guinea-pigs.  One of them was plainly in distress, and Kennedy had been watching him intently.

“It’s strange,” he remarked.  “I had samples of material from six ramekins.  Five of them seem to have had no effect whatever.  But if the bit that I gave this fellow causes such distress, what would a larger quantity do?”

“Then one of the ramekins was poisoned?” I questioned.

“I have discovered in it, as well as in the blood smear, the tox albumin that Doctor Murray mentioned,” he said, simply, pulling out his watch.  “It isn’t late.  I think I shall have to take a trip out to Miss Hargrave’s.  We ought to do it in an hour and a half in a car.”

Kennedy said very little as we sped out over the Long Island roads that led to the little colony of actors and actresses at Cedar Grove.  He seemed rather to be enjoying the chance to get away from the city and turn over in his mind the various problems which the case presented.

As for myself, I had by this time convinced myself that, somehow, the mushrooms were involved.  What Kennedy expected to find I could not guess.  But from what I had read I surmised that it must be that one of the poisonous varieties had somehow got mixed with the others, one of the Amanitas, just as deadly as the venom of the rattler or the copperhead.  I knew that, in some cases, Amanitas had been used to commit crimes.  Was this such a case?

We had no trouble in finding the estate of Miss Hargrave, and she was at home.

Kennedy lost no time introducing himself and coming to the point of his visit.  Madeline Hargrave was a slender, willowy type of girl, pronouncedly blond, striking, precisely the type I should have imagined that Mansfield would have been proud to be seen with.

“I’ve just heard of Mr. Mansfield’s illness,” she said, anxiously.  “Mr. Lewis called me up and told me.  I don’t see why Miss Grey or Doctor Murray didn’t let me know sooner.”