He held it up to the light and read the label, “Absinthe.”

“Ah,” he exclaimed with evident interest, looking first at the bottle and then at the wild, formless pictures.  “Our crazy Frenchman was an absintheur.  I thought the pictures were rather the product of a disordered mind than of genius.”

He replaced the bottle, adding:  “It is only recently that our own government placed a ban on the importation of that stuff as a result of the decision of the Department of Agriculture that it was dangerous to health and conflicted with the pure food law.  In France they call it the ‘scourge,’ the ‘plague,’ the ‘enemy,’ the ‘queen of poisons.’  Compared with other alcoholic beverages it has the greatest toxicity of all.  There are laws against the stuff in France, Switzerland, and Belgium.  It isn’t the alcohol alone, although there is from fifty to eighty per cent. in it, that makes it so deadly.  It is the absinthe, the oil of wormwood, whose bitterness has passed into a proverb.  The active principle absinthin is a narcotic poison.  The stuff creates a habit most insidious and difficult to break, a longing more exacting than hunger.  It is almost as fatal as cocaine in its blasting effects on mind and body.

“Wormwood,” he pursued, still rummaging about, “has a special affinity for the brain-cells and the nervous system in general.  It produces a special affliction of the mind, which might be called absinthism.  Loss of will follows its use, brutishness, softening of the brain.  It gives rise to the wildest hallucinations.  Perhaps that was why our absintheur chose first to destroy or steal all things green, as if there were some merit in the colour, when he might have made away with so many more valuable things.  Absintheurs have been known to perform some of the most intricate manoeuvres, requiring great skill and the use of delicate tools.  They are given to disappearing, and have no memory of their actions afterward.”

On an ink-spattered desk lay some books, including Lombroso’s “Degenerate Man” and “Criminal Woman.”  Kennedy glanced at them, then at a crumpled manuscript that was stuck into a pigeonhole.  It was written in a trembling, cramped, foreign hand, evidently part of a book, or an article.

“Oh, the wickedness of wealth!” it began.  “While millions of the poor toilers slave and starve and shiver, the slave-drivers of to-day, like the slave-drivers of ancient Egypt, spend the money wrung from the blood of the people in useless and worthless toys of art while the people have no bread, in old books while the people have no homes, in jewels while the people have no clothes.  Thousands are spent on dead artists, but a dollar is grudged to a living genius.  Down with such art!  I dedicate my life to righting the wrongs of the proletariat.  Vive l’anarchism!”

The thing was becoming more serious.  But by far the most serious discovery in the now deserted studio was a number of large glass tubes in a corner, some broken, others not yet used and standing in rows as if waiting to be filled.  A bottle labelled “Sulphuric Acid” stood at one end of a shelf, while at the other was a huge jar full of black grains, next a bottle of chlorate of potash.  Kennedy took a few of the black grains and placed them on a metal ash-tray.  He lighted a match.  There was a puff and a little cloud of smoke.