I'll blot out the stars for 'em! I'll show New York! I know
what I'm doing! And nothing on earth is going to stop me! All these
fool balloonists, with their big silk floating cigars! Deadly cigars
is what they are--deadly! You wait!"

Garrison was staring at him fixedly, fascinated by a new idea which had
crept upon his mind with startling abruptness. His one idea was to get
away for a vital two minutes by himself.

"Well, perhaps I'll try to get around again," he said. "I can see
you're very busy, and I mustn't keep you longer from your work. Good
luck and good-day."

"The only principle," the old man answered, his gaze directed to the
sky.

Garrison looked up, beholding a bird, far off in the azure vault,
soaring in the majesty of flight. Then he hastened again to the quiet
little street, and down by a fence at a vacant lot, where he paused and
looked about. He was quite alone. Drawing from his pocket the
envelope containing the old cigar that Hardy had undoubtedly let fall
as he died at the porch of the "haunted" house, he turned up the
raggedly bitten end.

"By George!" he exclaimed beneath his breath.

Tucked within the tobacco folds, in a small hollow space which was
partially closed by the filler which had once been bitten together, was
a powdery stuff that seemed comprised of small, hard particles, as of
crystals, roughly broken up.

His breath came fast. His heart was pumping rapidly. He raised the
cigar to his nostrils and smelled, but could only detect the pungent
odor of tobacco.

That the powder was a poison he had not the slightest doubt. Aware
that one poison only, thus administered, would have the potency to slay
an adult human being practically on the instant, he realized at once
that here, at the little, unimportant drug-shop of the place, the
simple test for such a stuff could be made in a matter of two minutes.

Eager and feverish to inform himself without delay, he took out his
knife and carefully removed all the powder from its place and wrapped
it most cautiously about in the paper of the envelope in hand. The
cigar he returned to his pocket.

Five minutes later, at the drug-store down the street, an obliging and
clever young chemist at the place was holding up a test-tube made of
glass, with perhaps two thimblefuls of acidulated solution which had
first been formed by dissolving the powder under inspection.

"If this is what you suppose," he said, "a slight admixtur