Doc Hypnotize Truth

So Doc knew instantly the ratty man was dying. The fellow was a dope addict. The shock of losing the hand was ending a career that would have come to its vile termination within a year or two anyway.

Doc sank beside the man. When the fellow saw he was not to be harmed more, he quieted a little.

"You were hired to kill Jerome Coffern?" Doc asked in a calm, compelling voice.

"No! No!" wailed the dying man. But the expression on his pinched and paling face showed he was lying.

For a moment, Doc said nothing. He exerted the full, strange quality of his golden eyes. Those eyes were warm and comforting now. Doc was making them exert a command for the truth.

It was amazing, the things Doc could do with his eyes. He had studied with the great masters of hypnotism, just as he had studied with famous surgeons. He had even gone to India and the Orient to gain knowledge from the mystic cults of the Far East.

By the time Doc asked his next question, he had exerted such a hypnotic influence upon the dying man that the fellow replied with the truth.

"What is the strange substance that dissolved the body of Jerome Coffern?" Doc prompted.

"It is called the Smoke of Eternity," whimpered the dying man.

"Of what is it made?"

"I don't know. None of us know. None of us little guys, that is. The Smoke of Eternity is just given us to use. We never get more than one cartridge at a time. And--and we get--get orders of who to use it on."

The man was about gone. Swiftly, Doc questioned, "Who gives it to you?"

The thin lips parted. The man gulped. He seemed to be trying to speak a name that started with the letter "K."

But he died before he could voice that name.

- The Land of Terror (1933) Chapter 3