“Yes,” I persisted, “that is all right—­but the pain and the moments before the drug begins to work?”

With one hand Garrick reached into the case, selecting a little thin glass tube, and with the other he pulled out his handkerchief.

“Smell that!” he exclaimed, bending over me so that I could see every move and be prepared for it.

Yet it was done so quickly that I could not protect myself.

“Ugh!” I ejaculated in surprise, as Garrick manipulated the thing with a legerdemain swiftness that quite baffled me, even though he had given me warning to expect something.

Everyone has seen freak moving picture films where the actor suddenly bobs up in another place, without visibly crossing the intervening space.  The next thing I knew, Garrick was standing across the room, in just that way.  The handkerchief was folded up and in his pocket.

It couldn’t have been done possibly in less than a minute.  What had happened?  Where had that minute or so gone?  I felt a sickening sensation.

“Smell it again?” Garrick laughed, taking a step toward me.

I put up my hand and shook my head negatively, slowly comprehending.

“You mean to tell me,” I gasped, “that I was—­out?”

“I could have jabbed a dozen needles into you and you would never have known it,” asserted Garrick with a quiet smile playing over his face.

“What is the stuff?” I asked, quite taken aback.

“Kelene—­ethyl chloride.  Whiff!—­and you are off almost in a second.  It is an anaesthetic of nearly unbelievable volatility.  It comes in little hermetically sealed tubes, with a tiny capillary orifice, to prevent its too rapid vaporising, even when opened for use.  Such a tube may be held in the palm of the hand and the end crushed off.  The warmth of the hand alone is sufficient to start a veritable spray.  It acts violently on the senses, too.  But kelene anaesthesia lasts only a minute or so.  The fraction of time is long enough.  Then comes the jab with the real needle—­perhaps another whiff of kelene to give the injection a chance.  In two or three minutes the injection itself is working and the victim is unconscious, without a murmur—­perhaps, as in your case, without any clear idea of how it all happened—­even without recollection of a handkerchief, unable to recall any sharp pain of a needle or anything else.”

He was holding up a little bottle in which was a thick, colorless syrup.

“And what is that?” I asked, properly tamed and no longer disposed to be disputatious.

“Hyoscine.”

“Is it powerful?”

“One one-hundredth of a grain of this strength, perhaps less, will render a person unconscious,” replied Garrick.  “The first symptom is faintness; the pupils of the eyes dilate; speech is lost; vitality seems to be floating away, and the victim lapses into unconsciousness.  It is derived from henbane, among ether things, and is a rapid, energetic alkaloid, more rapid than chloral and morphine.  And, preceded by a whiff of kelene, not even the sensations I have described are remembered.”