The villain
sent a letter to his victim, enclosing a stamped addressed envelope
for an answer. The gum of the envelope was poisoned. I did not know,
nor did I bother to find out, whether it was possible, but this, as I
said just now, is the beauty of writing a detective story. If there is
no such quick-working poison, then you invent one. If up to the moment
when the doubt occurs to you, your villain had been living in Brixton,
you immediately send him to Central Africa, where he extracts a poison
from a "deadly root" according to the prescription of the chief
medicine-man. ("It is the poison into which the Swabiji dip their
arrows," you tell the reader casually, as if he really ought to have
known it for himself.) Well, then, I invented my poison, and my
villain put it on the gum of a self-addressed envelope, and enclosed
it with a letter asking for his victim's autograph. He then posted the
letter, whereupon a very tragic thing happened.
What happened was that, having left the letter in the post for some
years while I formed fours and saluted, I picked up a magazine in the
Mess one day and began to read a detective story.
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