There was a light in Simon's room as I entered my house. A vague
impulse urged me to visit him. As I opened the door of his
sitting-room unannounced, he was bending, with his back toward me,
over a carcel lamp, apparently engaged in minutely examining some
object which he held in his hands. As I entered, he started suddenly,
thrust his hand into his breast pocket, and turned to me with a face
crimson with confusion.
"What!" I cried, "poring over the miniature of some fair lady? Well,
don't blush so much; I won't ask to see it."
Simon laughed awkwardly enough, but made none of the negative
protestations usual on such occasions. He asked me to take a seat.
"Simon," said I, "I have just come from Madame Vulpes."
This time Simon turned as white as a sheet, and seemed stupefied, as
if a sudden electric shock had smitten him. He babbled some
incoherent words, and went hastily to a small closet where he usually
kept his liquors. Although astonished at his emotion, I was too
preoccupied with my own idea to pay much attention to anything else.
"You say truly when you call Madame Vulpes a devil of a woman," I
continued, "Simon, she told me wonderful things tonight, or rather
was the means of telling me wonderful things. Ah! if I could only
get a diamond that weighed one hundred and forty carats!"
Scarcely had the sigh with which I uttered this desire died upon my
lips, when Simon, with the aspect of a wild beast, glared at me
savagely, and rushing to the mantel-piece, where some foreign weapons
hung on the wall, caught up a Malay creese, and brandished it
furiously before him.
"No!" he cried in French, into which he always broke when excited.
"No! you shall not have it! You are perfidious! You have consulted
with that demon, and desire my treasure! But I will die first! Me! I
am brave! You cannot make me fear!"
All this, uttered in a loud voice trembling with excitement,
astounded me. I saw at a glance that I had accidentally trodden upon
the edges of Simon's secret, whatever it was. It was necessary to
reassure him.
"My dear Simon," I said, "I am entirely at a loss to know what you
mean. I went to Madame Vulpes to consult with her on a scientific
problem, to the solution of which I discovered that a diamond of the
size I just mentioned was necessary. You were never alluded to during
the evening, nor, so far as I was concerned, even thought of. What
can be the meaning of this outburst? If you happen to have a set of
valuable diamonds in your possession, you need fear nothing from me.
The diamond which I require you could not possess; or if you did
possess it, you would not be living here."
Something in my tone must have completely reassured him; for his
expression immediately changed to a sort of constrained merriment,
combined, however, with a certain suspicious attention to my
movements. He laughed, and said that I must bear with him; that he
was at certain moments subject to a species of vertigo, which
betrayed itself in incoherent speeches, and that the attacks passed
off as rapidly as they came. He put his weapon aside while making
this explanation, and endeavored, with some success, to assume a
more cheerful air.
All this did not impose on me in the least. I was too much
accustomed to analytical labors to be baffled by so flimsy a veil. I
determined to probe the mystery to the bottom.
"Simon," I said, gayly, "let us forget all this over a bottle of
Burgundy. I have a case of Lausseure's _Clos Vongeot_ down-stairs,
fragrant with the odors and ruddy with the sunlight of the Côte d'Or.
Let us have up a couple of bottles. What say you?"
"With all my heart," answered Simon, smilingly.
I produced the wine and we seated ourselves to drink. It was of a
famous vintage, that of 1818, a year when war and wine throve
together, and its pure, but powerful juice seemed to impart renewed
vitality to the system. By the time we had half finished the second
bottle, Simon's head, which I knew was a weak one, had begun to yield,
while I remained calm as ever, only that every draught seemed to
send a flush of vigor through my limbs. Simon's utterance became
more and more indistinct. He took to singing French _chansons_ of a
not very moral tendency. I rose suddenly from the table just at the
conclusion of one of those incoherent verses, and fixing my eyes on
him with a quiet smile, said:
"Simon, I have deceived you. I learned your secret this evening. You
may as well be frank with me. Mrs. Vulpes, or rather, one of her
spirits, told me all."
He started with horror. His intoxication seemed for the moment to
fade away, and he made a movement towards the weapon that he had a
short time before laid down. I stopped him with my hand.
"Monster!" he cried, passionately, "I am ruined! What shall I do? You
shall never have it! I swear by my mother!"
"I don't want it," I said; "rest secure, but be frank with me. Tell
me all about it."
The drunkenness began to return. He protested with maudlin
earnestness that I was entirely mistaken,--that I was intoxicated;
then asked me to swear eternal secrecy, and promised to disclose the
mystery to me. I pledged myself, of course, to all. With an uneasy
look in his eyes, and hands unsteady with drink and nervousness, he
drew a small case from his breast and opened it. Heavens! How the
mild lamp-light was shivered into a thousand prismatic arrows, as it
fell upon a vast rose-diamond that glittered in the case! I was no
judge of diamonds, but I saw at a glance that this was a gem of rare
size and purity. I looked at Simon with wonder, and--must I confess
it?--with envy. How could he have obtained this treasure? In reply
to my questions, I could just gather from his drunken statements
(of which, I fancy, half the incoherence was affected) that he had
been superintending a gang of slaves engaged in diamond-washing in
Brazil; that he had seen one of them secrete a diamond, but, instead
of informing his employers, had quietly watched the negro until he
saw him bury his treasure; that he had dug it up, and fled with it,
but that as yet he was afraid to attempt to dispose of it publicly,--
so valuable a gem being almost certain to attract too much attention
to its owner's antecedents,--and he had not been able to discover
any of those obscure channels by which such matters are conveyed
away safely. He added, that, in accordance with Oriental practice,
he had named his diamond by the fanciful title of "The Eye of Morning."
While Simon was relating this to me, I regarded the great diamond
attentively. Never had I beheld anything so beautiful. All the
glories of light, ever imagined or described, seemed to pulsate in
its crystalline chambers. Its weight, as I learned from Simon, was
exactly one hundred and forty carats. Here was an amazing coincidence.
The hand of Destiny seemed in it. On the very evening when the
spirit of Leeuwenhoek communicates to me the great secret of the
microscope, the priceless means which he directs me to employ start
up within my easy reach! I determined, with the most perfect
deliberation, to possess myself of Simon's diamond.
I sat opposite him while he nodded over his glass, and calmly
revolved the whole affair. I did not for an instant contemplate so
foolish an act as a common theft, which would of course be discovered,
or at least necessitate flight and concealment, all of which must
interfere with my scientific plans. There was but one step to be
taken,--to kill Simon. After all, what was the life of a hide
peddling Jew, in comparison with the interests of science? Human
beings are taken every day from the condemned prisons to be
experimented on by surgeons. This man, Simon, was by his own
confession a criminal, a robber, and I believed on my soul a murderer.
He deserved death quite as much as any felon condemned by the laws;
why should I not, like government, contrive that his punishment
should contribute to the progress of human knowledge?
The means for accomplishing everything I desired lay within my reach.
There stood upon the mantel-piece a bottle half full of French
laudanum. Simon was so occupied with his diamond, which I had just
restored to him, that it was an affair of no difficulty to drug his
glass. In a quarter of an hour he was in a profound sleep.
I now opened his waistcoat, took the diamond from the inner pocket
in which he had placed it, and removed him to the bed, on which I
laid him so that his feet hung down over the edge. I had possessed
myself of the Malay creese, which I held in my right hand, while
with the other I discovered as accurately as I could by pulsation
the exact locality of the heart. It was essential that all the
aspects of his death should lead to the surmise of self-murder. I
calculated the exact angle at which it was probable that the weapon,
if levelled by Simon's own hand, would enter his breast; then with
one powerful blow I thrust it up to the hilt in the very spot which
I desired to penetrate. A convulsive thrill ran through Simon's limbs.
I heard a smothered sound issue from his throat, precisely like the
bursting of a large air-bubble, sent up by a diver, when it reaches
the surface of the water; he turned half round on his side, and as if
to assist my plans more effectually, his right hand, moved by some
more spasmodic impulse, clasped the handle of the creese, which it
remained holding with extraordinary muscular tenacity. Beyond this
there was no apparent struggle. The laudanum, I presume, paralyzed
the usual nervous action. He must have died instantaneously.
There was yet something to be done. To make it certain that all
suspicion of the act should be diverted from any inhabitant of the
house to Simon himself, it was necessary that the door should be
found in the morning _locked on the inside_. How to do this, and
afterwards escape myself? Not by the window; that was a physical
impossibility. Besides, I was determined that the windows also
should he found bolted. The solution was simple enough. I descended
softly to my own room for a peculiar instrument which I had used for
holding small slippery substances, such as minute spheres of glass,
etc. This instrument was nothing more than a long slender hand-vice,
with a very powerful grip, and a considerable leverage, which last
was accidentally owing to the shape of the handle. Nothing was
simpler than, when the key was in the lock, to seize the end of its
stem in this vice, through the keyhole, from the outside, and so lock
the door. Previously, however, to doing this, I burned a number of
papers on Simon's hearth. Suicides almost always burn papers before
they destroy themselves. I also emptied some more laudanum into
Simon's glass,--having first removed from it all traces of wine,--
cleaned the other wine-glass, and brought the bottles away with me.
If traces of two persons drinking had been found in the room, the
question naturally would have arisen, Who was the second? Besides,
the wine-bottles might have been identified as belonging to me. The
laudanum I poured out to account for its presence in his stomach, in
case of _post-mortem_ examination. The theory naturally would be
that he first intended to poison himself, but, after swallowing a
little of the drug, was either disgusted with its taste, or changed
his mind from other motives, and chose the dagger. These
arrangements made, I walked out, leaving the gas burning, locked the
door with my vice, and went to bed.
Simon's death was not discovered until nearly three in the afternoon.
The servant, astonished at seeing the gas burning,--the light
streaming on the dark landing from under the door, peeped through
the keyhole and saw Simon on the bed. She gave the alarm. The door
was burst open, and the neighborhood was in a fever of excitement.
Every one in the house was arrested, myself included. There was an
inquest; but no clue to his death, beyond that of suicide, could be
obtained. Curiously enough, he had made several speeches to his
friends the preceding week, that seemed to point to self-destruction.
One gentleman swore that Simon had said in his presence that
"he was tired of life." His landlord affirmed, that Simon, when
paying him his last month's rent, remarked that "he would not pay
him rent much longer." All the other evidence corresponded, the door
locked inside, the position of the corpse, the burnt papers. As I
anticipated, no one knew of the possession of the diamond by Simon,
so that no motive was suggested for his murder. The jury, after a
prolonged examination, brought in the usual verdict, and the
neighborhood once more settled down into its accustomed quiet.