That cryptic statement is a last desperate clue for Ironpants' team to solve the mystery and save the Chief's life. Actually, smoking plays a key role too -- smoking in a hospital no less. Just think, if they hadn't allowed smoking in hospitals back then, the Chief might have been a goner. There are other subplots which don't have anything to do with the peril facing the Chief and frankly seem rather tacked on for emotional effect.I wasn't paying close enough attention in part 1 -- Margaret O'Brien is all through that episode, and this one as well, as the head of the hospital pharmacy who has a special realtionship with Don Stroud.Margaret O'Brien had been, of course, a major child star, most memorably in "Meet Me in St. Louis." She would have been 33 here, and already well into the last gasps of her career. She's still alive at age 72, as of this writing.