Swamped

It frankly strikes you as strange that he wouldn't have a mask, given how many you've seen or heard about lately. And if he was working with this substance, why wouldn't he? Did he assume he was careful enough?

Well, your first thought as to where a mask might be is the coat you discarded. You shove him in the wardrobe as you take a look.

He starts knocking on it. Might draw attention, but you just don't have a lot of alternatives. You carefully approach the coat.

Here you go. A grebling-sized breather mask in the pocket. Doesn't look very high-quality, though. You open the wardrobe, standing to one side so he hopefully doesn't leap at you, and grab him as soon as you can. You then wrestle with him to the best of your ability until you get the mask on.

It takes a few minutes before he calms down.

"I suppose you're wondering what this is all about," he sighs.

"I was curious, yes."

He sighs.

"Money, mostly. This particular type of terror toxin mixes with alcohol to make a very distinctive liquor - very flavorful, or so the humans we've sold it to it tell me. But terror breeding isn't exactly on the right side of the law, what with the various toxins and what they can do to you if you don't neutralize the effects properly."

"So if it's that dangerous, why were you messing it without a mask?"

"They didn't give me a good mask. I can barely see out of it. Had to do some particularly sensitive operations, and I couldn't exactly do them blind. Seems I messed up anyway, though."

You give the fiercest face you can manage. Maybe if you're lucky, the mask strengthens the effect.

"In more ways than one."

But there's a lot that doesn't add up. If it's just illegal liquor, why do so many other criminals have these masks? And one more thing is bothering you.

"Who was in here with you a moment ago?"

"The buyer. I don't know his name, haven't even met him before now. He was going to arrange transportation, I don't know any details of that either."

Hmm. So no confirming your suspicions as to his identity just yet. Maybe it's better to focus on the ooze itself for the moment.

"How does this stuff work, exactly?"

"Well, basically, a terror is constantly producing a colorless ooze, which is totally harmless on its own. But it's got some structures... glands isn't quite the right word, but it's close enough. The glands are what produce the actual toxin. When it's in the ooze, it doesn't travel very far - but just a little whiff of it can drive you wild. But when the terror's opened up like that, if you hit the glands wrong, they spray fumes of the toxin all over. And it's only visible when it's stuck in the ooze."

Hmm. That doesn't quite make sense with what you observed with Mortimer. He went into a rage and you didn't, and you weren't wearing a mask at that point. And the ooze returned to normal when he did.

Maybe there's more to this line of questioning, or maybe you should focus on a different one.