Sir Jasper Threlfall did not know how long it would be before Mr.
Feist could safely be discharged from the establishment in which
Logotheti had so kindly placed him. Dr. Bream said 'it was as bad a
case of chronic alcoholism as he often saw.' What has grammar to do
with the treatment of the nerves? Mr. Feist said he did not want to be
cured of chronic alcoholism, and demanded that he should be let out
at once. Dr. Bream answered that it was against his principles to
discharge a patient half cured. Mr. Feist retorted that it was a
violation of personal liberty to cure a man against his will. The
physician smiled kindly at a view he heard expressed every day, and
which the law shared, though it might not be very ready to support it.
Physically, Mr. Feist was afraid of Dr. Bream, who had played football
for Guy's Hospital and had the complexion of a healthy baby and a
quiet eye. So the patient changed his tone, and whined for something
to calm his agitated nerves. One teaspoonful of whisky was all he
begged for, and he promised not to ask for it to-morrow if he might
have it to-day. The doctor was obdurate about spirits, but felt his
pulse, examined the pupils of his eyes, and promised him a calming
hypodermic in an hour. It was too soon after breakfast, he said. Mr.
Feist only once attempted to use violence, and then two large men came
into the room, as quiet and healthy as the doctor himself, and gently
but firmly put him to bed, tucking him up in such an extraordinary way
that he found it quite impossible to move or to get his hands out; and
Dr. Bream, smiling with exasperating calm, stuck a needle into his
shoulder, after which he presently fell asleep.
He had been drinking hard for years, so that it was a very bad case;
and besides, he seemed to have something on his mind, which made it
worse.
Logotheti came to see him now, and took a vast deal of trouble to be
agreeable. At his first visit Feist flew into a rage and accused the
Greek of having kidnapped him and shut him up in a prison, where
he was treated like a lunatic; but to this Logotheti was quite
indifferent; he only shook his head rather sadly, and offered Feist a
very excellent cigarette, such as it was quite impossible to buy, even
in London. After a little hesitation the patient took it, and the
effect was very soothing to his temper. Indeed it was wonderful, for
in less than two minutes his features relaxed, his eyes became quiet,
and he actually apologised for having spoken so rudely. Logotheti had
been kindness itself, he said, had saved his life at the very moment
when he was going to cut his throat, and had been in all respects the
good Samaritan. The cigarette was perfectly delicious. It was about
the best smoke he had enjoyed since he had left the States, he said.
He wished Logotheti to please to understand that he wanted to settle
up for all expenses as soon as possible, and to pay his weekly bills
at Dr. Bream's. There had been twenty or thirty pounds in notes in his
pocket-book, and a letter of credit, but all his things had been taken
away from him. He concluded it was all right, but it seemed rather
strenuous to take his papers too. Perhaps Mr. Logotheti, who was so
kind, would make sure that they were in a safe place, and tell the
doctor to let him see any other friends who called. Then he asked
for another of those wonderful cigarettes, but Logotheti was awfully
sorry--there had only been two, and he had just smoked the other
himself. He showed his empty case.
'By the way,' he said, 'if the doctor should happen to come in and
notice the smell of the smoke, don't tell him that you had one of
mine. My tobacco is rather strong, and he might think it would do you
harm, you know. I see that you have some light ones there, on the
table. Just let him think that you smoked one of them. I promise to
bring some more to-morrow, and we'll have a couple together.'
That was what Logotheti said, and it comforted Mr. Feist, who
recognised the opium at once; all that afternoon and through all the
next morning he told himself that he was to have another of those
cigarettes, and perhaps two, at three o'clock in the afternoon, when
Logotheti had said that he would come again.
Before leaving his own rooms on the following day, the Greek put four
cigarettes into his case, for he had not forgotten his promise; he
took two from a box that lay on the table, and placed them so that
they would be nearest to his own hand when he offered his case, but he
took the other two from a drawer which was always locked, and of which
the key was at one end of his superornate watch-chain, and he placed
them on the other side of the case, conveniently for a friend to take.
All four cigarettes looked exactly alike.
If any one had pointed out to him that an Englishman would not think
it fair play to drug a man deliberately, Logotheti would have smiled
and would have replied by asking whether it was fair play to accuse an
innocent man of murder, a retort which would only become unanswerable
if it could be proved that Van Torp was suspected unjustly. But to
this objection, again, the Greek would have replied that he had been
brought up in Constantinople, where they did things in that way;
and that, except for the trifling obstacle of the law, there was
no particular reason for not strangling Mr. Feist with the English
equivalent for a bowstring, since he had printed a disagreeable story
about Miss Donne, and was, besides, a very offensive sort of person
in appearance and manner. There had always been a certain directness
about Logotheti's view of man's rights.
He went to see Mr. Feist every day at three o'clock, in the most kind
way possible, made himself as agreeable as he could, and gave him
cigarettes with a good deal of opium in them. He also presented Feist
with a pretty little asbestos lamp which was constructed to purify
the air, and had a really wonderful capacity for absorbing the rather
peculiar odour of the cigarettes. Dr. Bream always made his round
in the morning, and the men nurses he employed to take care of his
patients either did not notice anything unusual, or supposed that
Logotheti smoked some 'outlandish Turkish stuff,' and, because he was
a privileged person, they said nothing about it. As he had brought
the patient to the establishment to be cured, it was really not to be
supposed that he would supply him with forbidden narcotics.
Now, to a man who is poisoned with drink and is suddenly deprived of
it, opium is from the beginning as delightful as it is nauseous to
most healthy people when they first taste it; and during the next four
or five days, while Feist appeared to be improving faster than might
have been expected, he was in reality acquiring such a craving for
his daily dose of smoke that it would soon be acute suffering to be
deprived of it; and this was what Logotheti wished. He would have
supplied him with brandy if he had not been sure that the contraband
would be discovered and stopped by the doctor; but opium, in the
hands of one who knows exactly how it is used, is very much harder
to detect, unless the doctor sees the smoker when he is under the
influence of the drug, while the pupils of the eye are unnaturally
contracted and the face is relaxed in that expression of beatitude
which only the great narcotics can produce--the state which Baudelaire
called the Artificial Paradise.
During these daily visits Logotheti became very confidential; that is
to say, he exercised all his ingenuity in the attempt to make Feist
talk about himself. But he was not very successful. Broken as the man
was, his characteristic reticence was scarcely at all relaxed, and it
was quite impossible to get beyond the barrier. One day Logotheti gave
him a cigarette more than usual, as an experiment, but he went to
sleep almost immediately, sitting up in his chair. The opium, as a
moderate substitute for liquor, temporarily restored the habitual tone
of his system and revived his natural self-control, and Logotheti soon
gave up the idea of extracting any secret from him in a moment of
garrulous expansion.
There was the other way, which was now prepared, and the Greek had
learned enough about his victim to justify him in using it. The cypher
expert, who had been at work on Feist's diary, had now completed his
key and brought Logotheti the translation. He was a rather shabby
little man, a penman employed to do occasional odd jobs about the
Foreign Office, such as engrossing documents and the like, by which he
earned from eighteenpence to half-a-crown an hour, according to the
style of penmanship required, and he was well known in the criminal
courts as an expert on handwriting in forgery cases.
He brought his work to Logotheti, who at once asked for the long entry
concerning the night of the explosion. The expert turned to it and
read it aloud. It was a statement of the circumstances to which Feist
was prepared to swear, and which have been summed up in a previous
chapter. Van Torp was not mentioned by name in the diary, but was
referred to as 'he'; the other entries in the journal, however, fully
proved that Van Torp was meant, even if Logotheti had felt any doubt
of it.
The expert informed him, however, that the entry was not the original
one, which had apparently been much shorter, and had been obliterated
in the ordinary way with a solution of chloride of lime. Here and
there very pale traces of the previous writing were faintly visible,
but there was not enough to give the sense of what was gone. This
proved that the ink had not been long dry when it had been removed,
as the expert explained. It was very hard to destroy old writing so
completely that neither heat nor chemicals would bring it out again.
Therefore Feist must have decided to change the entry soon after he
had made it, and probably on the next day. The expert had not found
any other page which had been similarly treated. The shabby little man
looked at Logotheti, and Logotheti looked at him, and both nodded; and
the Greek paid him generously for his work.
It was clear that Feist had meant to aid his own memory, and had
rather clumsily tampered with his diary in order to make it agree with
the evidence he intended to give, rather than meaning to produce the
notes in court. What Logotheti meant to find out was what the man
himself really knew and what he had first written down; that, and some
other things. In conversation, Logotheti had asked him to describe the
panic at the theatre, and Cordova's singing in the dark, but Feist's
answers had been anything but interesting.
'You can't remember much about that kind of thing,' he had said in his
drawling way, 'because there isn't much to remember. There was a crash
and the lights went out, and people fought their way to the doors in
the dark till there was a general squash; then Madame Cordova began
to sing, and that kind of calmed things down till the lights went up
again. That's about all I remember.'
His recollections did not at all agree with what he had entered in his
diary; but though Logotheti tried a second time two days later, Feist
repeated the same story with absolute verbal accuracy. The Greek asked
him if he had known 'that poor Miss Bamberger who died of shock.'
Feist blew out a cloud of drugged tobacco smoke before he answered,
with one of his disagreeable smiles, that he had known her pretty
well, for he had been her father's private secretary. He explained
that he had given up the place because he had come into some money.
Mr. Bamberger was 'a very pleasant gentleman,' Feist declared, and
poor Miss Bamberger had been a 'superb dresser and a first-class
conversationalist, and was a severe loss to her friends and admirers.'
Though Logotheti, who was only a Greek, did not understand every word
of this panegyric, he perceived that it was intended for the highest
praise. He said he should like to know Mr. Bamberger, and was sorry
that he had not known Miss Bamberger, who had been engaged to marry
Mr. Van Torp, as every one had heard.
He thought he saw a difference in Feist's expression, but was not sure
of it. The pale, unhealthy, and yet absurdly youthful face was not
naturally mobile, and the almost colourless eyes always had rather a
fixed and staring look. Logotheti was aware of a new meaning in them
rather than of a distinct change. He accordingly went on to say that
he had heard poor Miss Bamberger spoken of as heartless, and he
brought out the word so unexpectedly that Feist looked sharply at him.
'Well,' he said, 'some people certainly thought so. I daresay she was.
It don't matter much, now she's dead, anyway.'
'She paid for it, poor girl,' answered Logotheti very deliberately.
'They say she was murdered.'
The change in Feist's face was now unmistakable. There was a drawing
down of the corners of the mouth, and a lowering of the lids that
meant something, and the unhealthy complexion took a greyish shade.
Logotheti was too wise to watch his intended victim, and leaned back
in a careless attitude, gazing out of the window at the bright creeper
on the opposite wall.
'I've heard it suggested,' said Mr. Feist rather thickly, out of a
perfect storm of drugged smoke.
It came out of his ugly nostrils, it blew out of his mouth, it seemed
to issue even from his ears and eyes.
'I suppose we shall never know the truth,' said Logotheti in an idle
tone, and not seeming to look at his companion. 'Mr. Griggs--do you
remember Mr. Griggs, the author, at the Turkish Embassy, where we
first met? Tall old fellow, sad-looking, bony, hard; you remember him,
don't you?'
'Why, yes,' drawled Feist, emitting more smoke, 'I know him quite
well.'
'He found blood on his hands after he had carried her. Had you not
heard that? I wondered whether you saw her that evening. Did you?'
'I saw her from a distance in the box with her friends,' answered
Feist steadily.
'Did you see her afterwards?'
The direct question came suddenly, and the strained look in Feist's
face became more intense. Logotheti fancied he understood very well
what was passing in the young man's mind; he intended to swear in
court that he had seen Van Torp drag the girl to the place where her
body was afterwards found, and if he now denied this, the Greek, who
was probably Van Torp's friend, might appear as a witness and narrate
the present conversation; and though this would not necessarily
invalidate the evidence, it might weaken it in the opinion of the
jury. Feist had of course suspected that Logotheti had some object in
forcing him to undergo a cure, and this suspicion had been confirmed
by the opium cigarettes, which he would have refused after the first
time if he had possessed the strength of mind to do so.
While Logotheti watched him, three small drops of perspiration
appeared high up on his forehead, just where the parting of his thin
light hair began; for he felt that he must make up his mind what to
say, and several seconds had already elapsed since the question.
'As a matter of fact,' he said at last, with an evident effort, 'I did
catch sight of Miss Bamberger later.'
He had been aware of the moisture on his forehead, and had hoped that
Logotheti would not notice it, but the drops now gathered and rolled
down, so that he was obliged to take out his handkerchief.
'It's getting quite hot,' he said, by way of explanation.
'Yes,' answered Logotheti, humouring him, 'the room is warm. You must
have been one of the last people who saw Miss Bamberger alive,' he
added. 'Was she trying to get out?'
'I suppose so.'
Logotheti pretended to laugh a little.
'You must have been quite sure when you saw her,' he said.
Feist was in a very overwrought condition by this time, and Logotheti
reflected that if his nerve did not improve he would make a bad
impression on a jury.
'Now I'll tell you the truth,' he said rather desperately.
'By all means!' And Logotheti prepared to hear and remember accurately
the falsehood which would probably follow immediately on such a
statement.
But he was disappointed.
'The truth is,' said Feist, 'I don't care much to talk about this
affair at present. I can't explain now, but you'll understand one of
these days, and you'll say I was right.'
'Oh, I see!'
Logotheti smiled and held out his case, for Feist had finished the
first cigarette. He refused another, however, to the other's surprise.
'Thanks,' he said, 'but I guess I won't smoke any more of those. I
believe they get on to my nerves.'
'Do you really not wish me to bring you any more of them?' asked
Logotheti, affecting a sort of surprised concern. 'Do you think they
hurt you?'
'I do. That's exactly what I mean. I'm much obliged, all the same, but
I'm going to give them up, just like that.'
'Very well,' Logotheti answered. 'I promise not to bring any more. I
think you are very wise to make the resolution, if you really think
they hurt you--though I don't see why they should.'
Like most weak people who make good resolutions, Mr. Feist did not
realise what he was doing. He understood horribly well, forty-eight
hours later, when he was dragging himself at his tormentor's feet,
entreating the charity of half a cigarette, of one teaspoonful of
liquor, of anything, though it were deadly poison, that could rest his
agonised nerves for a single hour, for ten minutes, for an instant,
offering his life and soul for it, parching for it, burning, sweating,
trembling, vibrating with horror, and sick with fear for the want of
it.
For Logotheti was an Oriental and had lived in Constantinople; and
he knew what opium does, and what a man will do to get it, and that
neither passion of love, nor bond of affection, nor fear of man or
God, nor of death and damnation, will stand against that awful craving
when the poison is within reach.