Free A Pinch of Poison by Frances Lockridge Page B

Lois Winston, who only a few hours ago must have been thinking of what she would do tomorrow. Francis was in the autopsy room. He was smoking a cigarette, gloomily. He wondered, audibly, if Weigand didn’t know that even doctors sleep.
    â€œSo do detectives, when the chance arises,” Weigand told him. “How’s the test coming?”
    â€œI was waiting for you,” Francis told him. “Come along.”
    He led Weigand to the animal room but he ignored guinea-pigs, clustered softly in a cage. He went on, opened another cage and said, “Come on, kitty. Nice kitty.” The nice kitty, a formidable gray bruiser with one devastated ear, hissed at him. Francis looked into the cage, doubtfully, and closed it.
    â€œI think I’ll get some gloves,” he said. He got some gloves. “Andy doesn’t like experiments,” the doctor explained, opening the cage again. Andy emerged, well gripped and snarling.
    â€œI thought you said a guinea-pig,” Weigand said. “You can’t fool me, Doc. That’s a cat.” Weigand looked at Andy, who sneered. “Quite a cat,” Weigand said. “Do we have to kill a cat?”
    â€œWho said anything about killing it?” Francis wanted to know. “And as for the guinea-pig—that was metaphor. Andy, here, is a metaphorical guinea-pig.” He looked at Weigand, who regarded him questioningly. Francis seemed somewhat flustered. “Oh,” he said, “all right. I did think of using a guinea-pig. They’re always handy. But I checked up, and guinea-pigs won’t do.”
    â€œWhy?” Weigand wanted to know. “I thought guinea-pigs always did.” Francis shook his head.
    â€œNot for atropine,” he explained. “Guinea-pigs eat it—thrive on it. In the wild state, anyway; we don’t feed them atropine here. But they normally eat plants which have a large atropine content and don’t turn a hair. They tolerate the poison so well, as a matter of fact, that it would take about as much atropine to kill a guinea-pig as it would to kill a man. And, of course, there’s another difficulty.”
    â€œIs there?” Weigand’s voice was mild.
    Dr. Francis nodded.
    â€œHuman blood serum is almost as deadly to a guinea-pig as atropine is,” he said. “If we injected enough blood to carry a normally lethal dose of atropine into the pig, the pig would die of the blood first. The atropine wouldn’t make any difference. So I decided not to use a pig.”
    â€œI think you were very wise,” Weigand assured the doctor, who looked at him suspiciously and then grinned.
    â€œO.K.,” he said. “O.K. I just looked it up. I don’t carry everything in my head. Do you?”
    â€œNo,” Weigand said. “How about the cat?”
    Francis had been holding Andy, who was still annoyed, pressed against the top of a laboratory table. He looked down at Andy, who looked up at him, balefully, the black pupils of his eyes large and indignant in the normally lighted room. Francis, keeping both hands on the cat, nodded toward the cat’s eyes.
    â€œSee the pupils,” he directed. “It seems light enough in here to us, but the cat’s eyes know better. Out in the sun, the pupils would be slits. Now—here, hold him a minute.”
    Weigand held Andy down on the table and scratched behind a pointed ear. Andy seemed a little placated. Francis wheeled a hooded lamp over and turned it on. Powerful white light beat down on Andy and Weigand’s hands.
    â€œLook at his eyes,” Francis directed. Weigand looked. The pupils had narrowed to shut out the light.
    â€œNow,” Francis said, producing what appeared to be a medicine dropper, “I’ve got blood serum here, taken from Lois Winston’s heart during the autopsy. I’ll—hold that cat!”
    Andy, taking advantage of Weigand’s preoccupation, lurched under the