Two days passed, and nothing occurred. My watching seemed
hopeless, and I resolved to try the effect of a disguised
interrogatory. It might help to confirm my already settled
conviction, if it did not elicit any new evidence.
Seated in Bourgonef's room, in the old place, each with a cigar,
and chatting as of old on public affairs, I gradually approached
the subject of the recent murder.
"Is it not strange," I said, "that both these crimes should have
happened while we were casually staying in both places?"
"Perhaps we are the criminals," he replied, laughing. I shivered
slightly at this audacity. He laughed as he spoke, but there was a
hard, metallic, and almost defiant tone in his voice which
exasperated me.
"Perhaps we are," I answered, quietly. He looked full at me; but I
was prepared, and my face told nothing. I added, as in
explanation, "The crime being apparently contagious, we may have
brought the infection from Nuremberg."
"Do you believe in that hypothesis of imitation?"
"I don't know what to believe. Do you believe in there being only
one murderer? It seems such a preposterous idea. We must suppose
him, at any rate, to be a maniac."
"Not necessarily. Indeed there seems to have been too much artful
contrivance in both affairs, not only in the selection of the
victims, but in the execution of the schemes. Cunning as maniacs
often are they are still maniacs, and betray themselves."
"If not a maniac," said I, hoping to pique him, "he must be a man
of stupendous and pitiable vanity,--perhaps one of your constant-
minded friends, whom you refuse to call bloodthirsty."
"Constant-minded, perhaps; but why pitiably vain?"
"Why? Because only a diseased atrocity of imagination, stimulating
a nature essentially base and weak in its desire to make itself
conspicuous, would or could suggest such things. The silly youth
who 'fired the Ephesian dome,' the vain idiot who set fire to York
Minster, the miserable Frenchmen who have committed murder and
suicide with a view of making their exit striking from a world in
which their appearance had been contemptible, would all sink into
insignificance beside the towering infamy of baseness which--for
the mere love of producing an effect on the minds of men, and thus
drawing their attention upon him, which otherwise would never have
marked him at all--could scheme and execute crimes so horrible and
inexcusable. In common charity to human nature, let us suppose the
wretch is mad; because otherwise his miserable vanity would be too
loathsome." I spoke with warmth and bitterness, which increased as
I perceived him wincing under the degradation of my contempt.
"If his motive WERE vanity," he said, "no doubt it would be
horrible; but may it not have been revenge?"
"Revenge!" I exclaimed; "what! on innocent women?"
"You assume their innocence."
"Good God! do you know anything to the contrary?"
"Not I. But as we are conjecturing, I may as well conjecture it to
have been the desire to produce a startling effect."
"How do you justify your conjecture?"
"Simply enough. We have to suppose a motive; let us say it was
revenge, and see whether that will furnish a clue."
"But it can't. The two victims were wholly unconnected with each
other by any intermediate acquaintances, consequently there can
have been no common wrong or common enmity in existence to furnish
food for vengeance."
"That may be so; it may also be that the avenger made them
vicarious victims."
"How so?"
"It is human nature. Did you ever observe a thwarted child
striking in its anger the unoffending nurse, destroying its toys to
discharge its wrath? Did you ever see a schoolboy, unable to wreak
his anger on the bigger boy who has just struck him, turn against
the nearest smaller boy and beat him? Did you ever know a
schoolmaster, angered by one of the boy's parents, vent his pent-up
spleen upon the unoffending class? Did you ever see a subaltern
punished because an officer had been reprimanded? These are
familiar examples of vicarious vengeance. When the soul is stung
to fury, it must solace itself by the discharge of that fury--it
must relieve its pain by the sight of pain in others. We are so
constituted. We need sympathy above all things. In joy we cannot
bear to see others in distress; in distress we see the joy of
others with dismal envy which sharpens our pain. That is human
nature."
"And," I exclaimed, carried away by my indignation, "you suppose
that the sight of these two happy girls, beaming with the quiet joy
of brides, was torture to some miserable wretch who had lost his
bride."
I had gone too far. His eyes looked into mine. I read in his that
he divined the whole drift of my suspicion--the allusion made to
himself. There often passes into a look more than words can
venture to express. In that look he read that he was discovered,
and I read that he had recognized it. With perfect calmness, but
with a metallic ring in his voice which was like the clash of
swords, he said:
"I did not say that I supposed this; but as we were on the wide
field of conjecture--utterly without evidence one way or the other,
having no clue either to the man or his motives--I drew from the
general principles of human nature a conclusion which was just as
plausible--or absurd if you like--as the conclusion that the motive
must have been vanity."
"As you say, we are utterly without evidence, and conjecture drifts
aimlessly from one thing to another. After all, the most plausible
explanation is that of a contagion of imitation."
I said this in order to cover my previous imprudence. He was not
deceived--though for a few moments I fancied he was--but replied:
"I am not persuaded of that either. The whole thing is a mystery,
and I shall stay here some time in the hope of seeing it cleared
up. Meanwhile, for a subject of conjecture, let me show you
something on which your ingenuity may profitably be employed."
He rose and passed into his bedroom. I heard him unlocking and
rummaging the drawers, and was silently reproaching myself for my
want of caution in having spoken as I had done, though it was now
beyond all doubt that he was the murderer, and that his motive had
been rightly guessed; but with this self-reproach there was mingled
a self-gratulation at the way I had got out of the difficulty, as I
fancied.
He returned, and as he sat down I noticed that the lower part of
his surtout was open. He always wore a long frogged and braided
coat reaching to the knees--as I now know, for the purpose of
concealing the arm which hung (as he said, withered) at his side.
The two last fastenings were now undone.
He held in his hand a tiny chain made of very delicate wire. This
he gave me, saying:
"Now what would you conjecture that to be?"
"Had it come into my hands without any remark, I should have said
it was simply a very exquisite bit of ironwork; but your question
points to something more out of the way."
"It IS iron-work," he said.
Could I be deceived? A third fastening of his surtout was undone!
I had seen but two a moment ago.
"And what am I to conjecture?" I asked.
"Where that iron came from? It was NOT from a mine." I looked at
it again, and examined it attentively. On raising my eyes in
inquiry--fortunately with an expression of surprise, since what met
my eyes would have startled a cooler man--I saw the fourth
fastening undone!
"You look surprised," he continued, "and will be more surprised
when I tell you that the iron in your hands once floated in the
circulation of a man. It is made from human blood."
"Human blood!" I murmured.
He went on expounding the physiological wonders of the blood,--how
it carried, dissolved in its currents, a proportion of iron and
earths; how this iron was extracted by chemists and exhibited as a
curiosity; and how this chain had been manufactured from such
extracts. I heard every word, but my thoughts were hurrying to and
fro in the agitation of a supreme moment. That there was a dagger
underneath that coat--that in a few moments it would flash forth--
that a death-struggle was at hand,--I knew well. My safety
depended on presence of mind. That incalculable rapidity with
which, in critical moments, the mind surveys all the openings and
resources of an emergency, had assured me that there was no weapon
within reach--that before I could give an alarm the tiger would be
at my throat, and that my only chance was to keep my eyes fixed
upon him, ready to spring on him the moment the next fastening was
undone, and before he could use his arm.
At last the idea occurred to me, that as, with a wild beast, safety
lies in attacking him just before he attacks you, so with this
beast my best chance was audacity. Looking steadily into his face,
I said slowly:
"And you would like to have such a chain made from my blood." I
rose as I spoke. He remained sitting, but was evidently taken
aback.
"What do you mean?" he said.
"I mean," said I, sternly, "that your coat is unfastened, and that
if another fastening is loosened in my presence, I fell you to the
earth."
"You're a fool!" he exclaimed.
I moved towards the door, keeping my eye fixed upon him as he sat
pale and glaring at me.
"YOU are a fool," I said--" and worse, if you stir."
At this moment, I know not by what sense, as if I had eyes at the
back of my head, I was aware of some one moving behind me, yet I
dared not look aside. Suddenly two mighty folds of darkness seemed
to envelop me like arms. A powerful scent ascended my nostrils.
There was a ringing in my ears, a beating at my heart. Darkness
came on, deeper and deeper, like huge waves. I seemed growing to
gigantic stature. The waves rolled on faster and faster. The
ringing became a roaring. The beating became a throbbing. Lights
flashed across the darkness. Forms moved before me. On came the
waves hurrying like a tide, and I sank deeper and deeper into this
mighty sea of darkness. Then all was silent. Consciousness was
still.
. . . . . .
How long I remained unconscious, I cannot tell. But it must have
been some considerable time. When consciousness once more began to
dawn within me, I found myself lying on a bed surrounded by a group
of eager, watching faces, and became aware of a confused murmur of
whispering going on around me. "Er Lebt" (he lives) were the words
which greeted my opening eyes--words which I recognized as coming
from my landlord.
I had had a very narrow escape. Another moment and I should not
have lived to tell the tale. The dagger that had already immolated
two of Bourgonef's objects of vengeance would have been in my
breast. As it was, at the very moment when the terrible Ivan had
thrown his arms around me and was stifling me with chloroform, one
of the servants of the hotel, alarmed or attracted by curiosity at
the sound of high words within the room, had ventured to open the
door to see what was going on. The alarm had been given, and
Bourgonef had been arrested and handed over to the police. Ivan,
however, had disappeared; nor were the police ever able to find
him. This mattered comparatively little. Ivan without his master
was no more redoubtable than any other noxious animal. As an
accomplice, as an instrument to execute the will of a man like
Bourgonef, he was a danger to society. The directing intelligence
withdrawn, he sank to the level of the brute. I was not uneasy,
therefore, at his having escaped. Sufficient for me that the real
criminal, the mind that had conceived and directed those fearful
murders, was at last in the hands of justice. I felt that my task
had been fully accomplished when Bourgonef's head fell on the
scaffold.