t I've no more idea than anybody else
how the----"

Smith snapped his fingers irritably.

"The facts--the facts!" he demanded. "What you _don't_ know cannot
help us!"

"Well, sir," said Morrison, clearing his throat again, "when the
prisoner, Samarkan, was admitted, and I put him safely into his cell,
he told me that he suffered from heart trouble, that he'd had an
attack when he was arrested and that he thought he was threatened
with another, which might kill him----"

"One moment," interrupted Smith, "is this confirmed by the police
officer who made the arrest?"

"It is, sir," replied Colonel Warrington, swinging his chair around
and consulting some papers upon his table. "The prisoner was overcome
by faintness when the officer showed him the warrant and asked to be
given some cognac from the decanter which stood in his room. This was
administered, and he then entered the cab which the officer had
waiting. He was taken to Bow Street, remanded, and brought here in
accordance with some one's instructions."

"_My instructions_" said Smith. "Go on, Morrison."

"He told me," continued Morrison more steadily, "that he suffered from
something that sounded to me like apoplexy."

"Catalepsy!" I suggested, for I was beginning to see light.

"That's it, sir! He said he was afraid of being buried alive! He asked
me, as a favor, if he should die in prison to go to a friend of his
and get a syringe with which to inject some stuff that would do away
with all chance of his coming to life again after burial."

"You had no right to talk to the prisoner!" roared Colonel Warrington.

"I know that, sir, but you'll admit that the circumstances were peculiar.
Anyway, he died in the night, sure enough, and from heart failure,
according to the doctor. I managed to get a couple of hours leave in
the evening, and I went and fetched the syringe and a little tube of
yellow stuff."

"Do you understand, Petrie?" cried Nayland Smith, his eyes blazing
with excitement. "Do you understand?"

"Perfectly."

"It's more than I do, sir," continued Morrison, "but as I was
explaining, I brought the little syringe back with me and I filled it
from the tube. The body was lying in the mortuary, which you've seen,
and the door not being locked, it was easy for me to slip in there for
a moment. I didn't fancy the job, but it was soon done. I threw the
syringe and the tube over the wall into the lane outside, as I'd been
told to do.

"What part