as not quite so
positive.

Kennedy listened impatiently, then sprang up the stairs, only to call
back to the policeman: "Go call me a taxicab at the ferry, an electric
cab. Mind, now, not a gasoline-cab--electric."

We found the victim lying on a sort of bed of sailcloth in a loft
apparently devoted to the peaceful purposes of the junk trade, but
really a perfect arsenal and magazine. It was dusty and cobwebbed,
crammed with stands of arms, tents, uniforms in bales, batteries of
Maxims and mountain-guns, and all the paraphernalia for carrying on a
real twentieth-century revolution.

The young ambulance surgeon was still there, so quickly had we been able
to get down-town. He had his stomach-pump, hypodermic syringe, emetics,
and various tubes spread out on a piece of linen on a packing-case.
Kennedy at once inquired just what he had done.

"Thought at first it was only a bad case of syncope," he replied, "but
I guess he was dead some minutes before I got here. Tried rhythmic
traction of the tongue, artificial respiration, stimulants, chest and
heart massage--everything, but it was no use:"

"Have you any idea what caused his death?" asked Craig as he hastily
adjusted his apparatus to an electric light socket--a rheostat, an
induction-coil of peculiar shape, and an "interrupter."

"Poison of some kind--an alkaloid. They say they heard him fall as they
came up-stairs, and when they got to him he was blue. His face was as
blue as it is now when I arrived. Asphyxia, failure of both heart and
lungs, that was what the alkaloid caused."

The gong of the electric cab sounded outside. As Craig heard it he
rushed with two wires to the window, threw them out, and hurried
downstairs, attaching them to the batteries of the cab.

In an instant he was back again.

"Now, Doctor," he said, "I'm going to perform a very delicate test on
this man. Here I have the alternating city current and here a direct,
continuous current from the storage-batteries of the cab below. Doctor,
hold his mouth open. So. Now, have you a pair of forceps handy? Good.
Can you catch hold of the tip of his tongue? There. Do just as I tell
you. I apply this cathode to his skin in the dorsal region; under the
back of the neck, and this anode in the lumbar region at the base of the
spine--just pieces of cotton soaked in salt solution and covering the
metal electrodes, to give me a good contact with the body."

I was fascinated. It was gruesome, and yet I