The Case of Capital Intrigue by Carolyn Keene

Author:Carolyn Keene
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin

8

The Stranger in the Darkness

“George, George!” Nancy cried. “You only ate half of that sandwich, right?”

George’s voice was a mere whisper. “Nan, it was the food.”

“It must have been poisoned!” Nancy exclaimed. She leaped up and shouted down the hallway for help. Three or four people rushed in.

“George is sick,” Nancy said. She took off her jacket and wrapped it around George as best she could. “Is there an infirmary in the building?”

A slight young man with wire-rim glasses picked up the phone on George’s desk. “There’s always a doctor on call here,” he said, already dialing the number.

Nancy knelt down next to George while they all waited anxiously. Her breathing seemed steady and strong, but she was pale and shivering violently. Nancy held on to her shoulders to comfort her.

“Okay, clear out now!” The voice came from outside in the hall. “Let’s have some room, some air in here!” A trim, middle-aged woman wearing a white lab coat over a business suit pushed through the crowd at the door. She knelt down next to George and briskly opened her medical bag. “What happened here?” the woman asked.

Nancy noticed that everything about the doctor was neatly organized, from the row of pens in her breast pocket to the instruments in her bag.

“Something she ate made her sick,” Nancy said.

The doctor took George’s blood pressure and pulse, then pushed gently around her abdomen. “What did she have for lunch?”

Nancy retrieved the half-eaten sandwich from George’s desk and handed it to the doctor.

The doctor unfolded a pair of gold-rimmed glasses and put them on. She peeled off the top piece of bread. It looked like a regular turkey and Swiss cheese sandwich to Nancy. The cheese was covered with little sproutlike greens.

The doctor pinched off one of the sprouts and smelled it.

“What is it?” Nancy asked.

“I think it’s ipecac,” the doctor said, taking a tiny taste.

“Ipecac?” Nancy asked. “As in syrup of ipecac that makes you throw up?”

“Exactly. Has she vomited?”

“No,” Nancy said.

“Then it probably wasn’t a severe does,” the doctor said, to Nancy’s relief. “It’s a good thing she didn’t eat the whole sandwich.”

The doctor put the sandwich down and spoke softly to George. “You’re going to be just fine, honey. We’ll take you to the infirmary where you can rest this afternoon. You’ll be feeling just like yourself by tonight.”

George could only nod gratefully.

A nurse soon arrived with a gurney, and while she and several others got George ready to go, Nancy drew the doctor aside.

“What exactly is ipecac?”

“It’s a plant,” the doctor replied. “Actually the dried root of a plant. It contains emetine, which taken in large enough doses can make you violently ill or even kill you.”

“Does that mean someone deliberately tried to hurt George?” Nancy asked.

The doctor folded her glasses and put them away. “There isn’t enough in this sandwich to do serious harm,” she said. “But this is just about the meanest practical joke I’ve ever seen.”

“Where would someone get that stuff?”

“The plant comes from South America, I believe, but you can get the seeds here and sprout them.

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