Chapter X

       Animal Magnetism

       Table of Contents

      Nearly a month has passed since this strange marriage, and Monsieur Blurosset is seated at his little green-covered table, the lamp-light falling full upon the outspread pack of cards, over which the blue spectacles bend with the same intent and concentrated gaze as on the night when the fate of Valerie hung on the lips of the professor of chemistry and pasteboard. Every now and then, with light and careful fingers, Monsieur Blurosset changes the position of some card or cards. Sometimes he throws himself back in his chair and thinks deeply. The expressionless mouth, which betrays no secrets, tells nothing of the nature of his thoughts. Sometimes he makes notes on a long slip of paper; rows of figures, and problems in algebra, over which he ponders long. By-and-by, for the first time, he looks up and listens.

      His little apartment has two doors. One, which leads out on to the staircase; a second, which communicates with his bedchamber. This door is open a very little, but enough to show that there is a feeble light burning within the chamber. It is in the direction of this door that the blue spectacles are fixed when Monsieur Blurosset suspends his calculations in order to listen; and it is to a sound within this room that he listens intently.

      That sound is the laboured and heavy breathing of a man. The room is tenanted.

      “Good,” says Monsieur Blurosset, presently, “the respiration is certainly more regular. It is really a most wonderful case.”

      As he says this, he looks at his watch. “Five minutes past eleven—time for the dose,” he mutters.

      He goes to the little cabinet from which he took the drug he gave to Valerie, and busies himself with some bottles, from which he mixes a draught in a small medicine-glass; he holds it to the light, puts it to his lips, and then passes with it into the next room.

      There is a sound as if the person to whom he gave the medicine made some faint resistance, but in a few minutes Monsieur Blurosset emerges from the room carrying the empty glass.

      He reseats himself before the green table, and resumes his contemplation of the cards. Presently a bell rings. “So late,” mutters Monsieur Blurosset; “it is most likely some one for me.” He rises, sweeps the cards into one pack, and going over to the door of his bedroom, shuts its softly. When he has done so, he listens for a moment with his ear close to the woodwork. There is not a sound of the breathing within.

      He has scarcely done so when the bell rings for the second time. He opens the door communicating with the staircase, and admits a visitor. The visitor is a woman, very plainly dressed, and thickly veiled.

      “Monsieur Blurosset?” she says, inquiringly.

      “The same, madame. Pray enter, and be good enough to be seated.” He hands her a chair at a little distance from the green table, and as far away as he can place it from the door of the bedchamber: she sits down, and as he appears to wait for her to speak, she says,—

      “I have heard of your fame, monsieur, and come——”

      “Nay, madame,” he says, interrupting her, “you can raise your veil if you will. I perfectly remember you; I never forget voices, Mademoiselle de Cevennes.”

      There is no shade of impertinence in his manner as he says this; he speaks as though he were merely stating a simple fact which it is as well for her to know. He has the air, in all he does or says, of a scientific man who has no existence out of the region of science.

      Valerie—for it is indeed she—raises her veil.

      “Monsieur,” she says, “you are candid with me, and it will be the best for me to be frank with you. I am very unhappy—I have been so for some months past; and I shall be so until my dying day. One reason alone has prevented my coming to you long ere this, to offer you half my fortune for such another drug as that which you sold to me some time past. You may judge, then, that reason is a very powerful one, since, though death alone can give me peace, I yet do not wish to die. But I wish to have at my command a means of certain death. I may never use it at all: I swear never to use it on anyone but myself!”

      All this time the blue spectacles have been fixed on her face, and now Monsieur Blurosset interrupts her—

      “And now for such a drug, mademoiselle, you would offer me a large sum of money?” he asks.

      “I would, monsieur.”

      “I cannot sell it you,” he says, as quietly as though he were speaking of some unimportant trifle.

      “You cannot?” she exclaims.

      “No, mademoiselle. I am a man absorbed entirely in the pursuit of science. My life has been so long devoted to science only, that perhaps I may have come to hold everything beyond the circle of my little laboratory too lightly. You asked me some time since for a poison, or at least you were introduced to me by a pupil of mine, at whose request I sold you a drug. I had been twenty years studying the properties of that drug. I may not know them fully yet, but I expect to do so before this year is out. I gave it to you, and, for all I know to the contrary, it may in your hands have done some mischief.” He pauses here and looks at her for a moment; but she has borne the knowledge of her crime so long, and it has become so much a part of her, that she does not flinch under his scrutiny.

      “I placed a weapon in your hands,” he continues, “and I had no right to do so. I never thought of this at that time; but I have thought of it since. For the rest, I have no inducement to sell you the drug you ask for. Money is of little use to me except in the necessary expenses of the chemicals I use. These”—he points to the cards—“give me enough for those expenses; beyond those, my wants amount to some few francs a week.”

      “Then you will not sell me this drug? You are determined?” she asks.

      “Quite determined.”

      She shrugs her shoulders. “As you please. There is always some river within reach of the wretched; and you may depend, monsieur, that they who cannot support life will find a means of death. I will wish you good evening.”

      She is about to leave the room, when she stops, with her hand upon the lock of the door, and turns round.

      She stands for a few minutes motionless and silent, holding the handle of the door, and with her other hand upon her heart. Monsieur Blurosset has the faintest shadow of a look of surprise in his expressionless countenance.

      “I don’t know what is the matter with me to-night,” she says, “but something seems to root me to this spot. I cannot leave this room.”

      “You are ill, mademoiselle, perhaps. Let me give you some restorative.”

      “No, no, I am not ill.”

      Again she is silent; her eyes are fixed, not on the chemist, but with a strange vacant gaze