ertain that instead of putting on his
gloves he thrust them into the pocket of his linen dust-coat. Folcker
says that when his master returned he took the gloves from the pocket
of the linen coat and placed them on the table in the hall--as was his
habit. It was only when the Baron was going out again that he put on
the left-hand one, and then suddenly drew it off and rubbed his
fingers. The first finger of his left hand had undoubtedly been cut,
and hence infected with that substance which causes almost instant
death and the exact symptoms of heart disease."

"Orosin--did you say?" asked the head of the Amsterdam police.

"Yes," I replied. "Orosin--the most dangerous, subtle and easily
administered poison known to our modern toxicologists. And your great
financier Baron van Veltrup has died by the hand of one who has
wilfully administered it!"

"Well," said the stolid man with the scraggy beard, rather
reluctantly, "I confess that this has come to me as a perfect
revelation."

"You have only to order the exhumation of the Baron's body, and an
examination of the left hand, to be convinced that what this
Englishman, Mr. Garfield, has discovered is the actual truth!"
declared Doctor Obelt, whose reputation as a pathologist was the
highest in the Netherlands, and against whose opinion even the Chief
of Police of Amsterdam could raise no word.

"It shall be done, gentlemen," the stolid official assured us. "It
shall be done in secret--and at once."

He was true to his word, for at noon next day I received an invitation
to call again at the Police Bureau, and was there informed that a
small superficial cut upon the first finger of the left hand had been
discovered.

Therefore there was no doubt that death had resulted from foul play.

If such were the case, it seemed more than probable that to Count de
Chamartin, the intimate associate of Oswald De Gex, a similar dose of
orosin had been administered!

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SIXTH

MORE ABOUT MATEO SANZ

The means by which the unfortunate Baron van Veltrup had met with his
death was as ingenious as that practised upon me by the expert thief,
Despujol. As I reflected upon all the details as related to me by the
valet, Folcker, I suddenly recollected that the Baron's strange
visitor, the man who must have placed that sharp scrap of razor-blade
within his glove at the moment when the unsuspicious victim had gone
outside to speak with his servant, was described