r desk--press it when I shout.
Oh, no, Miss Edgburn; no, I shan't dance circles nor put my fingers
into my nose, nor bite the dust and die. Look how I dare it all. Now
Petrie, _now_!"

And lo! as he spoke, out of the nostrils of the figure on the cross
there rushed downward two streams of white vapour which beat upon
the pillows and upon him, smothering both in white dust.

"Face powder, Miss Edgburn, only face powder from your own little
case over there," he said. "I removed the devil's dust last night
when I was in this room alone."

She made him no reply--only, like a cornered wretch, screamed out
and fainted.

"Mr. Narkom, you have seen the method of administering the thing
which caused the death of those five men; it is now only fair that
you should know what that thing was," he said, turning to the
superintendent. "It is known by two names--Devil's Dust and Dust of
Death, and both suit it well. It is the fine, feathery powder
that grows on the young shoots of the bamboo tree--a favourite
method of secret killing with the natives of the Malay Peninsula
and those of Madagascar, the Philippines and Ceylon. When blown
into the nostrils of a living creature it produces first an awful
agony of suffocation, a feeling as though the brain is coming down
and exuding from the nostrils, then delirium, during which the
victim invariably falls on his face and bites the earth; then comes
death. Death without a trace, my friend, for the hellish dust all
but evaporates, and the slight sediment that remains is carried out
of the system by the spasm of enteric it produces. That is the
riddle's solution. As for the rest, those men were lured here by
letters--from Alvarez--telling them of the reef's great fortune, of
the necessity for coming at once and bringing their deeds with
them, and impressing upon them the possibility of being defrauded
if they breathed one word to a mortal soul about their leaving or
why. They came, they were invited to spend the night and to sleep
upon that accursed bed, and--the devil's dust did the rest. I traced
that out through poor Jim Peabody's sock. It was one of the blue
yarn kind that are given to the inmates of workhouses. I traced him
through that; and the others through the photographs. Each had been
known to have received a letter from London, and each had in turn
vanished without a word. Poor chaps! Poor unhappy chaps! Let us
hope, dear friend, that they have found 'the Place of Sapphires'