Black Orchids

Cramer shook his head. "We went into that too. One of them suggested it-the nephew. That seems to be a possibility. It sounds farfetched to me, but of course it's possible. Now what the doctor says. Brady."

"Excuse me," Wolfe said. "You talked to those people.

Had Miss Huddleston nothing to say to them before she died? Any of them?"

"Not much. Do you know what tetanus does?"

"Vaguely."

"It does plenty. Like strychnine, only worse because there are no periods of relaxation and it lasts longer. When Brady got there Friday night her jaw was already locked tight. He gave her avertin to relieve her, and kept it up till the end. When my man was there Saturday night she was bent doubje backwards. Sunday she told Brady through her teeth she wanted to tell people good-bye, and he took them in one at a time. I've got their statements. Nothing significant, what you'd expect. Of course she only said a few words to each one-she was in bad shape. Her brother tried to tell her that her approaching death wasn't an accident, it was murder, but Brady and the nurse wouldn't let him."

"She herself had no such suspicion?"

"Not in evidence. You realize what she was like." Cramer shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth. "What Brady says about the tetanus, one three-hundredth of a grain of the toxin is fatal. The bacilli and spores are more or less around everywhere, but of course especially in the neighborhood of horses. The soil around a barnyard reeks with it. I asked Brady what about his infecting the cut or the bandage with his own fingers when he dressed it, since he had just been riding, but he said he had washed his hands, and so had the Nichols girl, and she corroborated it. He said it was highly unlikely that there should have been tetanus bacilli on the piece of glass or her slipper or the skin of her toe or that animal's paw, at least enough of them to cause such a quick and virulent attack, but he said it was also unlikely that when a man walks across a street at a corner with a green light he should get run over, but sometimes he does. He says that he deeply regrets he didn't return Tuesday evening or Wednesday and give her an injection of antitoxin, but he doesn't blame himself because no doctor alive would have done so. After the poison reached the nerve centers, as it had when Brady arrived Friday night, it was too late for antitoxin, though he tried it. Everything Brady said has been checked with the Examiner and is okay."