“Garrick,” I said at length, “do you really think that we have to deal with anything in this case but just plain attempted kidnapping of the old style?”

He shook his head doubtfully.  I knew him to be anything but an alarmist and waited impatiently for him to speak.

“I wouldn’t think so,” he said at length slowly, “except for one thing.”

“What’s that?” I asked eagerly.

“His mention of the ‘sleepmakers’ and Paris,” he replied briefly.

Garrick had risen and walked over to a cabinet in the corner of his room.  When he returned it was with something gleaming in the morning sunshine as he rolled it back and forth on a piece of paper, just a shining particle.  He picked it up carefully.

I bent over to look at it more closely and there, in Garrick’s hand, was a tiny bit of steel, scarcely three-eighths of an inch long, a mere speck.  It was like nothing of which I had ever heard or read.  Yet Garrick himself seemed to regard the minute thing with a sort of awe.  As for me, I knew not what to make of it.  I wondered whether it might not be some new peril.

“What is it?” I asked at length, seeing that Garrick might be disposed to talk, if I prompted him.

“Well,” he answered laconically, holding it up to the light so that I could see that it was in reality a very minute, pointed hollow tube, “what would you say if I told you it was the point of a new—­er—­poisoned needle?”

He said it in such a simple tone that I reacted from it toward my own preconceived notions of the hysterical newspaper stories.

“I’ve heard about all the poisoned needle stories,” I returned.  “I’ve investigated some of them and written about them for my paper, Guy.  And I must say still that I doubt them.  Now in the first place, the mere insertion of a hypodermic needle—­of course, you’ve had it done, Guy—­is something so painful that anyone in his senses would cry aloud.  Then to administer a drug that way requires a great deal of skill and knowledge of anatomy, if it is to be done with full and quick effect.”

Garrick said nothing, but continued to regard the hollow point which he had obtained somewhere, perhaps on a previous case.

“Why, such an injection,” I continued, recalling the result of my former careful investigations on the subject, “couldn’t act instantaneously anyhow, as it must if they are to get away with it.  After the needle is inserted, the plunger has to be pushed down, and the whole thing would take at least thirty seconds.  And then, the action of the drug.  That would take time, too.  It seems to me that in no case could it be done without the person’s being instantly aware of it and, before lapsing into unconsciousness, calling for help or—­”

“On the contrary,” interrupted Garrick quietly, “it is absurdly easy.  Waiving the question whether they might not be able to get Violet Winslow in such a situation where even the old hypodermic method which you know would serve as well as any other, why, Marshall, just the hint that fellow dropped tells me that he could walk up to her on the street or anywhere else, and—­”