Bulligan, and I can assure you that Her Majesty would take an extremely dim view of your calling them rude names.”
Lady Rhys had flipped open her lorgnette to give him a reproving glare, but she thought better of it just in time and switched to an ingratiating smile. “Now, would you please answer my son’s question? We are all deeply grieved over the death of Mr. Ochs and I personally find it most disturbing to learn that he may have been the victim of foul play.”
“No maybe about it, ma’am. Accordin’ to what I heard on the news, somebody fed ’im castor oil.”
“Castor oil wouldn’t have killed him! It would have”—Lady Rhys paused momentarily—“produced somewhat different symptoms from those he evinced last night.”
“Well, it wasn’t just castor oil. It was something like castor oil. With rice in it. Seems to me it was the rice that done ’im in.”
“Ricin,” said Madoc. “Of course. Ricin is what kills children who chew on the beans from the castor oil plant. They have a delayed reaction, sometimes several hours, sometimes a day or more. Ochs wasn’t a health food freak, by any chance?”
“Hell, no,” said Joe Ragovsky. “He was a food freak, period. Bill liked his grub. What does this ricin taste like?”
“I have no idea and am not too eager to find out,” said Madoc, “but I can’t imagine it’s too awful if kids eat the beans. You have to chew them to get the poisoning effect, otherwise they just slip through the digestive system intact. If you were to run a few through a food mill and mix the resulting mash with something spicy, I suppose you could get your intended victim to ingest a dose that would do the job. The kicker would be, you see, that he wouldn’t know he’d had any. He wouldn’t relate his symptoms to what he’d eaten because so much time had passed. By the time he began to feel sick, he’d already be in serious trouble, as Ochs plainly was for quite some time before he managed to get offstage.”
“I ought to have noticed,” mourned Sir Emlyn.
“I doubt whether your noticing would have made any difference, Tad. Ochs was clearly determined to tough it out. And he did, poor chap. Mr. Bulligan, you don’t by any chance have a two-way radio in your plane?”
“You kiddin’? I ain’t even sure I got an engine.”
“Then how about a battery that we might borrow in the hope it would operate the hotel’s radio?”
“Huh. Mister, the only radio I own’s one o’ them weeny pocket transistor kind an’ the batteries is about the size o’ my little finger. An’ it’s in my shack about fifty miles from here an’ I don’t even know if I got juice enough in my tank to get home, never mind bring the dang thing back here.”
“We could siphon some fuel out of our emergency tank for you,” Steve MacVittie offered. “Though I’m afraid it might not—” His gaze drifted over to the tattered wreck parked too near the Grumman, and his voice faltered into stillness.
“Might not? You can bet your last two bits it might not, brother. You know what’d happen if I went an’ poured one little slug o’ them high-voltage atom squeezin’s you burn into my ol’ Moxie Mabel? She’d go straight into orbit an’ come down about a teaspoonful o’ rust an’ sawdust, that’s what.”
“Then what do you run her on? Just regular gasoline, like a lawn tractor?”
“I do when I can get it. Mostly I run ’er on homemade alcohol. I got a little what you might call a—”
“Still?” Madoc suggested.
“I was going to say processin’ plant. Anyways, that’s what she’s used to an’ she don’t seem to mind it none.”
“There’s liquor on the plane,” said Ed Naxton. “I doubt if it’s as powerful as the stuff you make, but we could try.”
A smile of wonderful radiance overspread the old flyer’s grizzled features. “Never can tell, pardner. You just trot ’er out, an’ we’ll give ’er a go.”
Chapter 9
T HEY’D MADE A
Lady Rhys had flipped open her lorgnette to give him a reproving glare, but she thought better of it just in time and switched to an ingratiating smile. “Now, would you please answer my son’s question? We are all deeply grieved over the death of Mr. Ochs and I personally find it most disturbing to learn that he may have been the victim of foul play.”
“No maybe about it, ma’am. Accordin’ to what I heard on the news, somebody fed ’im castor oil.”
“Castor oil wouldn’t have killed him! It would have”—Lady Rhys paused momentarily—“produced somewhat different symptoms from those he evinced last night.”
“Well, it wasn’t just castor oil. It was something like castor oil. With rice in it. Seems to me it was the rice that done ’im in.”
“Ricin,” said Madoc. “Of course. Ricin is what kills children who chew on the beans from the castor oil plant. They have a delayed reaction, sometimes several hours, sometimes a day or more. Ochs wasn’t a health food freak, by any chance?”
“Hell, no,” said Joe Ragovsky. “He was a food freak, period. Bill liked his grub. What does this ricin taste like?”
“I have no idea and am not too eager to find out,” said Madoc, “but I can’t imagine it’s too awful if kids eat the beans. You have to chew them to get the poisoning effect, otherwise they just slip through the digestive system intact. If you were to run a few through a food mill and mix the resulting mash with something spicy, I suppose you could get your intended victim to ingest a dose that would do the job. The kicker would be, you see, that he wouldn’t know he’d had any. He wouldn’t relate his symptoms to what he’d eaten because so much time had passed. By the time he began to feel sick, he’d already be in serious trouble, as Ochs plainly was for quite some time before he managed to get offstage.”
“I ought to have noticed,” mourned Sir Emlyn.
“I doubt whether your noticing would have made any difference, Tad. Ochs was clearly determined to tough it out. And he did, poor chap. Mr. Bulligan, you don’t by any chance have a two-way radio in your plane?”
“You kiddin’? I ain’t even sure I got an engine.”
“Then how about a battery that we might borrow in the hope it would operate the hotel’s radio?”
“Huh. Mister, the only radio I own’s one o’ them weeny pocket transistor kind an’ the batteries is about the size o’ my little finger. An’ it’s in my shack about fifty miles from here an’ I don’t even know if I got juice enough in my tank to get home, never mind bring the dang thing back here.”
“We could siphon some fuel out of our emergency tank for you,” Steve MacVittie offered. “Though I’m afraid it might not—” His gaze drifted over to the tattered wreck parked too near the Grumman, and his voice faltered into stillness.
“Might not? You can bet your last two bits it might not, brother. You know what’d happen if I went an’ poured one little slug o’ them high-voltage atom squeezin’s you burn into my ol’ Moxie Mabel? She’d go straight into orbit an’ come down about a teaspoonful o’ rust an’ sawdust, that’s what.”
“Then what do you run her on? Just regular gasoline, like a lawn tractor?”
“I do when I can get it. Mostly I run ’er on homemade alcohol. I got a little what you might call a—”
“Still?” Madoc suggested.
“I was going to say processin’ plant. Anyways, that’s what she’s used to an’ she don’t seem to mind it none.”
“There’s liquor on the plane,” said Ed Naxton. “I doubt if it’s as powerful as the stuff you make, but we could try.”
A smile of wonderful radiance overspread the old flyer’s grizzled features. “Never can tell, pardner. You just trot ’er out, an’ we’ll give ’er a go.”
Chapter 9
T HEY’D MADE A
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