an electric light socket in each cell--recently installed as the result
of the agitation of a prison reform committee. The low-powered bulb
was taken out and the glaring nitrogen gas one substituted. It made
the cell very bright, and by the glare the colonel gathered up a number
of the cigarettes. Some had been smoked down to a mere stub; others
had not been lighted, and two or three were broken in half, neither end
showing signs of either having been scorched by a match or wet by the
lips of Singa Phut.

"Queer he'd waste 'em that way," observed Donovan. "Usually they can't
get enough to smoke."

"He didn't exactly waste them," said the colonel grimly, as he looked
at the divided but otherwise perfect cigarettes in his hand.

"What do you call it then?" demanded the headquarters detective.

"Well, I think he was looking for something in the cigarettes--and--he
found it."

"What do you mean?" asked Dr. Warren.

"Wait. Maybe I can show you."

Colonel Ashley carefully gathered up all the cigarettes in the cell, a
number of them being perfect. With them, and the black butts, as well
as the broken paper tubes, he moved over to the small table in the
cell, and spread them out.

Donovan reached under the colonel's arm and broke open one of the whole
cigarettes. "I don't see--" he began. "For the love of Mike look at
this!" he suddenly exclaimed. "There's a needle in this dope stick!"

"And, if you value your life don't touch it!" cried the colonel.
"That's what I was looking for! Don't so much as scratch yourself the
hundredth part of an inch or-- Well, you saw Singa Phut," he ended
grimly.

"Poisoned needle, Colonel?" asked Dr. Warren, as he shoved the
cigarette Donovan had broken toward the middle of the table.

"That's what I suspect. If we had a cat now or a rat--"

"Easy enough to get a rat," interposed the warden. "There's always
some of the beasts in the traps we set about. We catch 'em alive. I
don't like poison. Here, Riley, go and see if you can find a rat in
one of the traps. What you going to do, Colonel? Try it on him?"

"If you have one, yes. You get my idea, I guess. Some one of Singa
Phut's Indian friends, knowing he would rather go out this way than pay
the penalty of his crime, brought in a package of his favorite
cigarettes.

"In two, three, or in perhaps more of the 'dope sticks,' as my friend
Donovan calls them, he shoved a fine needle, the tip of which was
dipped in some swift, subtle Indian poison, the secret of which these
two alone, perhaps, knew.

"With the cigarettes in his possession it was easy enough for Singa
Phut to smoke some and extract a needle from another. It was probably
marked in some secret way. More than one needle was sent to guard
against failure. But the first one must have worked. I'd like to find
it."

"I'll have the cell swept for you," promised the warden as his deputy
went off to look for a rat. A keeper was summoned with a broom, and
brushed out the cell. It did not take long, for it was very clean.
Most of the debris was cigarette ash and scraps of paper and tobacco.
And it was in this debris, carefully poked over with a lead pencil,
that a needle was found.

Colonel Ashley, using extreme care, laid the two together, after an
examination of the other unbroken cigarettes had disclosed the fact
that none of them concealed anything.

"I got one, Warden! A beaut!" came Riley's voice from down the
corridor, and he came in with a wire cage containing a large rat which
cowered in one corner of his cell, even as Singa Phut had shrunk into
his when the end came.

"How you going to get at him, Colonel?" asked the warden. "They're
nasty to handle. One of 'em nipped my dog fierce when I gave him a
chance at killing it a day or so ago."

"I'm not going to let it out. If I had a stick, or something that I
could fasten the needle on, I could work a sort of javelin," remarked
the colonel.

"I'll get you one," offered Riley, much interested in the coming
experiment. Donovan, too, looked on in startled wonder.

A long, slender stick was brought and, using great care, with his
rubber gloves on that he used in autopsies, Doctor Warren fastened the
needle to the wand. Then Colonel Ashley thrust the improvised spear
through the wires of the cage and lightly punctured the rat, which gave
a protesting squeak.

"It didn't hurt him much," observed the colonel, "and, if I have
guessed right, his death will be painless."



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