“I don’t know that I quite wanted to.”
“Let bad alone, eh? But damn it, it’s interesting. I say, what a scoop for the papers, if it comes off! ‘First murder ever caught by the polariscope.’ Better than Crippen and the wireless. Only they’ll have a bit of a job explaining it. Now, look here, what are we going to do about it? Who did the analysis?”
“Lubbock.”
“Oh, yes—Home Office man, of course. We’ll have to get on to him. It’s chance if he’s kept the stuff by him. What? Oh, he has. That’s all right then. We’ve only got to take a squint at it and then we shall know. I mean, if the stuff really is racemic, we shall know. If not, we never shall. What’s the time? Quarter-past eleven. No time like the present. Here, driver!”
He thrust his head out of the window and gave an address in Woburn Square.
“It’s all on our way, and Lubbock never goes to bed before midnight. I know him well. He’ll be keen on this.”
His energy swept me up, feebly protesting, and in a few minutes’ time we were standing on Sir James Lubbock’s doorstep, ringing the bell.
The door was opened by a manservant, of whom Waters inquired whether Sir James was at home.
“No, sir. He is working late tonight, sir, at the Home Office. I think it’s the arsenic case, sir.”
“Oh, of course. That’s luck for us, Munting. We’ll run down and catch him there. You might give him a ring, Stevens, and say I’m coming down to see him on an urgent matter. You know who I am?”