MR. CROWE PARLEYS WITH THE EVIL ONE.
He needed her no longer,
Each day it grew more plain;
First with a startled wonder,
Then with a wondering pain.
—_Proctor._
“You are sick, that’s sure”—they say;
“Sick of what?”—they disagree.
“’Tis the brain”—thinks Doctor A;
“’Tis the heart”—holds Doctor B;
“The liver—my life I’d lay!”
“The lungs!” “The lights!”
Ah me!
—_Browning._
Mr. Crowe was an intensely selfish man, but he had never found his
favourite vice a profitable one. Regardless of the feelings of others,
he found all the world against him; and his heart, entertaining no good
company, was occupied by the evil tenants always on the look-out for
such lodgings.
His marriage had brought him nothing but disappointment; his wife,
finding him at first indifferent to her society, became at last herself
unfit to entertain any one. Her life was no less a burden to herself
than to him.
Neglected, and all but ignored, her temper became daily more
intolerable; and soon, from a bright, happy woman, she became a morose
and shrewish invalid, occupied only with the thoughts of her wrongs.
Because she no longer pleased her husband, she soon grew to be
troublesome; and when such a man as Mr. Crowe realizes that state of
things, the wish to be rid of it is never far distant from his
thoughts. At first a scarcely defined, but soon a clearer shape of
deadly intention formed itself before him, and found entertainment in
his heart.
What wonder? He had been a murderer half his life in a licensed and
acknowledged sense. What pain had he ever spared to secure his ends?
What thought for others had ever interfered with his pursuits?
To abstain from putting out of the way of his pleasure and advancement
a troublesome wife might be a concession to the prejudices of society.
It was certainly only because such a process was condemned by law that
he forbore at present to adopt it. He had reasons in abundance to
satisfy his own mind that such a method of ridding himself of annoyance
was justifiable. It is to be feared that if the murder spirit were to
write his reminiscences he could tell some ugly stories of very
respectable houses which had exhibited invitations to him to call when
on his rounds. Sick people, when their illness lasts an inordinate
length of time, must be often wished out of the way, else doctors would
not be so frequently asked by over-anxious relatives and friends,
“Don’t you think it would be a blessing if the Lord would take him,
sir?”
It was a favourite reply of Dr. Stanforth’s to this question, “Very
likely, but I am not the Lord.”
How very fortunate it is that our thoughts cannot _all_ be read, and
that we can obscure the windows in our breasts from too inquisitive
observation!
It must have been very trying to such an experimenter to have to adopt
a roundabout method to release himself from his bonds, when he knew of
so many pleasant and simple processes of hastening the departure of
lingering mortals on the banks of Jordan. There were, however, two
perfectly legal, not to say most fashionable, means of facilitating the
descent into Hades which he was free to adopt; certain enough, though
perhaps a little tedious-viz., Brandy and Chloral; and both quite to
the victim’s taste. You could not call Mr. Crowe a generous man, yet he
never stinted his wife’s brandy. It was everywhere convenient, and its
supply always replenished. There is no law against liberal housekeeping
arrangements. Some people, however, take a great deal of killing by
alcohol, and Mrs. Crowe seemed obstinately to live for the purpose of
confuting the highest medical opinions as to the prognosis of her case.
Clearly the cirrhosis was shortening her life in a very languid manner.
But the doses of chloral, to which she took very kindly, could be
increased, and this was done with better prospects of success. Of
course Mr. Crowe took care to let her have the advice of the most
eminent of his colleagues, who each diagnosed the disorder from
which she suffered according to his own speciality. The eminent
heart-specialist considered it the most curious “presystolic” case he
had seen for some time. But then the liver and stomach man smiled
incredulously when his turn came, and found plenty to interest him
also, while he made no account at all of his colleague’s discovery.
Then the brain man came along, and said the liver was to ordinary
doctors what the devil was to theologians, a very ill-used personality
indeed, and generally a mere cover for a diagnosis which puzzled them.
For his part, he had decided the mischief to be in the grey matter of
one of the frontal convolutions of the brain. The gynæcologist laughed
at all the others, and declared that if _his_ delightful branch of
science received more attention in the medical world, the profession
would make the healing art worthy of the age, which at present it was
very far from being.
As they stepped into their carriages after these examinations, each
sighed deeply to think how ignorant the other was of the science of
medicine, and heartily thanked Providence that they had devoted
themselves to their particular speciality.
They ordered that neither stimulants nor chloral should be allowed, and
ostensibly both were banished; but as Mrs. Crowe’s servants found
little difficulty and no danger in keeping up the supplies, things went
on as usual. Her own maid, it will be remembered, was Janet Spriggs, a
niece of Nurse Podger. Janet’s private opinion was that, as missus
couldn’t eat, she must be kept alive by stimulants; she considered them
nourishing and good for ladies in low spirits. Then, as she couldn’t
sleep without her draughts, how cruel it would be to deprive her of
this means of repose! With the assistance therefore of a neighbouring
chemist, the chloral was nightly administered. The chemist had his
authority in a prescription of Mr. Crowe’s, which he had repeatedly
dispensed without demanding fresh instructions. The worthy pharmacist
would not have objected had the paper been brought daily for fifty
years. Mr. Crowe never appeared to scrutinise his accounts very
closely. Certainly he took no exception whatever to the amount of drugs
swallowed by his wife. And so Olympia became a hopeless imbecile.
How she lived was a mystery. A little jelly, a custard, a few spoonfuls
of beef tea, a morsel of Brand’s Essence, and her alcohol, helped her
to drag on her existence from day to day. Yet for the past two years
she had not appeared to be getting much weaker. She had no real
kindness from any one about her. Her maid paid her all the attention
which could be expected from a servant who did not really love her
mistress. But this did not interfere with her “day out,” her “weekly
evening,” or her love-making; for Janet was in love, and the object of
her heart’s adoration was Mr. Walter Mole. Janet “looked high,” as cook
said. Spriggs was a pretty, well-built girl, and it was prophesied in
the kitchen that she would “ride in her carriage” some day. Mr. Mole
often came to the house on professional business with Mr. Crowe, and
though he was extremely discreet in the company of his superiors, was
not above a little diversion with the servants when favourable
occasions arose. Often of a night when he left Mr. Crowe’s study by the
front door he would run down the area steps to have a chat with “pretty
little Spriggie,” as he called her, and had frequently met her by
appointment on the occasions when her holidays came round; but all
this, on both sides, was with the greatest circumspection. Of course
her fellow-servants were in the secret; but as no man was kept at Mr.
Crowe’s, and as poor Mrs. Crowe was not in a condition to receive
confidences, there was no fear of gossip reaching the dining-room, for
the unapproachable master would have snapped the head off any domestic
who had attempted disclosures with him. Mr. Mole’s little flirtation
was not likely to get abroad, and poor Janet went on losing her
silly little heart, and dreaming of being one day mistress of an
establishment of her own, when her Walter should place her in the
position she felt she was born to fill.
Now Mr. Mole’s attentions were not wholly caused by the tender passion.
He had long had dark and deep suspicion of his chief. Scientific
secrets were concealed from him, of that he was sure. He was carrying
out a long course of physiological experiment, the object of which Mr.
Mole was unable to fathom, and he was not the sort of man to be kept
out of a good thing willingly. A great number of animals had been used
up for some unexplained reasons, and always at night; some at the
hospital laboratory, and others, as he had reason to suspect, at
Crowe’s own home. Numerous square cases had from time to time been sent
in from Odessa and other Russian towns. These were never opened in Mr.
Mole’s presence, but were always reserved till the nights when Mr.
Crowe worked alone. Never had he succeeded in finding even one of the
empty cases. What could Mr. Crowe want from Russia which must be kept
so very secret?
For months this question had agitated the breast of our inquisitive
little physiologist, and he seemed no nearer its solution than when he
first set his brains to work upon it. One day, however, he picked up
under his employer’s desk a small pamphlet printed in characters of a
language with which he was quite unfamiliar. It was something like
Greek, but he knew it was not that. However, he thought it was good
enough to take pains about, so he went to an office in Fleet Street
which advertised itself as willing to translate anything into anything
in the world of human speech. He found that the pamphlet in question
was in the Russian language, and was a treatise on the poison of
mushrooms written by a professor of toxicology at Moscow. It gave a
very curious account of the symptoms produced in various mammals by the
administration of the active principles of several poisonous fungi, and
urged that they should be tried by some doctor, having proper
convenience for doing so, on hospital patients, with a view to the
investigation of the symptoms produced by them on human beings. Mr.
Mole paid his translation fee and preserved his notes for future use,
restoring the Russian pamphlet to the laboratory from which he had
taken it.
He was still puzzled at the secrecy shown by Mr. Crowe, having often
before assisted him in the investigation of the action of the most
deadly and obscure vegetable poisons, which were always tried on some
of the unfortunate patients with more or less valuable results.
One day, when visiting Janet at her aunt’s home by appointment, Mr.
Mole confided to her his desire to know what those foreign boxes
contained which he had discovered at the laboratory, and asked her if
she had ever observed such things in her master’s rooms? Spriggs said
she had not noticed them, but would oblige him by keeping a sharp
look-out; and shortly after, to his great delight, she handed him one
which she had abstracted from a cupboard in the study. It was empty,
but Mr. Mole took it home with a view to closer scrutiny. In the corner
of the box, which was of thin deal, he found a brown powder, which he
subjected to careful microscopical examination, and was not long in
proving to his complete satisfaction that it consisted of the spores of
some mushroom, of a species which he was not precisely able to
determine. However, he had satisfied himself that certain kinds of
Russian fungi were imported by Mr. Crowe for some mysterious purpose.
Some months after this he was on a visit to the kitchen when the other
servants were absent temporarily, and Spriggs was preparing for her
mistress a small dish of stewed mushrooms, of which she was able to
partake with more relish than she showed for her other food. Spriggs
told him that her master had ordered her to let her mistress have them
as often as she liked, as they were very good for her complaint. He did
not at the time attach any importance to this discovery; but when a few
days after a case of mushroom poisoning of a whole family was reported
at the hospital, he remembered the circumstance, and took copious notes
of the cases. In the college Library he turned up from the files of the
_Lancet_ all the cases he could find of poisoning by fungi, and soon
had a very clear idea of the peculiar symptoms of such cases, after
which he began a course of experiments for himself. At first he thought
Mr. Crowe was engaged on some monograph on the subject that was to
bring him distinction, especially as he noticed in the wards set apart
to his principal’s cases, symptoms more or less severe, which he had no
doubt were due to small doses of some such agent as _Muscarin_,
_Lorchelin_, or _Bulbosin_, the active principles of poisonous
mushrooms. On examining the prescriptions for the medicines which these
patients were taking, he found that his ideas were correct, and that
Mr. Crowe had been exhibiting these poisons in minute doses to all of
them. He made no remark, but obtaining a supply from the dispenser,
tried their effect in various doses on a number of animals which he
kept for such purposes in one of the subterranean chambers under the
pathological rooms. It was not long before Mr. Mole was in possession
of quite a fund of information relating to the use of these potent
drugs.
He found, to his horror, that in none of the papers or books which he
could find bearing on the subject was there a record of any re-agent or
test that could be relied upon for the detection of the poison after it
had been taken internally. Other poisons had their respective tests,
but these deadly principles existing in fungi could be administered
criminally with little chance of detection, and no chemist would be
able to prove their presence in food or drink to the satisfaction of
any jury.