"I won't be a minute," he said. The shorter man looked aromid the room, which was a laboratory. He ambled over to gaze, without understand-mg, at some apparatus. "It's here somewhere," said Paul Townsend, lifting and shifting papers on the desk, opening the left top drawer. "Letter I meant to mail. Simply forgot. Now where . . . ?" He was an extremely good-looking man, six feet high, in prime state at thirty-seven. His handsome face wore a little fussy frown. "Take your time," said Mr. Gibson, who was older, in no hurry whatever, and who liked to browse. "What's all this?" "Ah . . ." Paul Townsend found the letter. "Got it That? That's poison." "What have you done? Made a collection?" Mr. Gibson peered at a double rank of little square-bottomed bottles aligned to the fraction of an inch, neatly labeled, behind the glass doors of a cupboard. "Lot of the stuff we use seems to be poisonous," Paul Townsend told him.
