Baron von Opperman was suddenly the cynosure of several pairs of eyes. He was delighted with the success of his attempt towards the general entertainment.
"The evening papers," he continued, "they have in them news of a sudden death. But in the hotel here now they are speaking of something--what you call more--mysterious. There has been ordered an examination post-mortem!"
"It is a case of poisoning then, I presume?" the Prince asked, leaning forward.
"It is so supposed," the attache answered. "It seems that the doctors could find no trace of disease, nothing to have caused death. They were not able to decide anything. The man, they said, was in perfect health--but dead."
"It must have been, then," the Prince remarked, "a very wonderful poison."
"Without doubt," Baron Opperman answered.
"There are many such," he murmured. "Indeed the science of toxicology was never so ill-understood as now. I am assured that there are many poisons known only to a few chemists in the world, a single grain of which is sufficient to destroy the strongest man and leave not the slightest trace behind. If the poisoner be sufficiently accomplished he can pursue his--calling without the faintest risk of detection."
"The Prince is, I believe, right," he remarked. "It is for that reason, doubtless, that I have heard of men whose lives have been threatened, who have deposited in safe places a sealed statement of the danger in which they find themselves, with an account of its source, so that if they should come to an end in any way mysterious there may be evidence against their murderers."
"A very reasonable and judicious precaution," the Prince remarked with glittering eyes. "Only if the poison was indeed of such a nature that it was not possible to trace it nothing worse than suspicion could ever be the lot of any one."
Mr. Sabin helped himself carefully to salad, and resumed the discussion with his next course.
"Perhaps not," he admitted. "But you must remember that suspicion is of itself a grievous embarrassment. No man likes to feel that he is being suspected of murder. By the bye, is it known whom the unfortunate person was?"
"The servant of a French nobleman who is staying in the hotel," Mr. Brott remarked. "I heard as much as that."