CHAPTER XXV.

CONCERNS THE UNEXPECTED

The old priest rose unceremoniously, kicked the dog’s body away beneath a bench out of sight, and then, returning to the table, carefully collected the fatal powder, dried it, and placed it in a tiny glass-stoppered phial.

After spreading some more of the powder upon the glass, he treated it in a similar fashion, again drying it by holding the sheet of glass over the flame of the spirit-lamp and continually moving it about.

Having thus exhausted all the fluid, the ingredients of which had taken him over a fortnight to prepare, he placed the powder in the phial, which he carefully sealed with black wax.

The old man, bent to his work of sealing up the deadly compound he had prepared, was, truth to tell, one of the greatest experts in Europe upon the history and properties of poisons and their effects upon the living body.

Beneath the cloak of religion he had for many years prosecuted experiments, both in the small back room in his own presbytery, which he always kept locked from old Teresa, and in that secret laboratory wherein he was now closeted.

He was speaking to himself in Italian as he dropped the hot wax upon the glass stopper of the phial.

“The truth contained in this manuscript,” he murmured, “has upset all the previous theories and calculations of toxicologists. Absorption has been believed to vary in its degree and rapidity, not only according to the state of the poison, but according to the nature of the surface to which it is applied. All the known poisons which can be absorbed through the unbroken skin, such as belladonna, creosote, prussic acid, morphia, and the like, are absorbed slowly; when the cuticle is removed, and the surface of the true skin is laid bare, then the absorption takes place with much greater rapidity. In this discovery of mine the substance itself seems to act chemically upon the skin, and thus leads to rapid and complete absorption.”

He took the lamp, recovered the dog’s body, and examined the place whereon he had rubbed the deadly powder.

There was no mark whatever upon the skin--nothing to show how death had been caused.

“For a woman,” he laughed, “the powder may be darkened and placed upon her hair-comb. For a man, a little upon his penholder, the handle of his walking-stick, or upon his shaving-soap. A disease of the spinal marrow will at once be caused--an unknown disease, which will puzzle the whole medical profession. In the manuscript the symptoms are described--violent spasms, the limbs separated, stiff and rigid, and violent shakings of the whole body. At first the spasms are marked down the back and legs, but after a brief period they fix upon the chest, and result in violent tetanus, with fixation of the muscles of respiration, death supervening with the intellect perfectly clear. In the dog those symptoms have been exact--so they will be in the case of the person upon whom experiment must be made.”

Don Mario’s source of income was surely an amazing one. His snug bank balance was being constantly added to by those mysterious remittances which were reaching him so frequently from all corners of Europe.

He now removed the gloves he wore for safety, and, opening a drawer in a rickety old cupboard, took out a tiny glass tube an inch long, sealed with red wax, and a small, sharp, hollow-steel pin about four inches long, and ending with an indiarubber bulb--something like the filler for a fountain-pen. After scribbling a few words in pencil on a piece of paper, he packed all together in cotton wool in a small box--a poisoner’s outfit--and, after sealing it for registered post, wrote upon it the address of Madame Lambert, in the Rue Muret, at Chartres, France.

The directions were to press the rubber bulb, and so take up the contents of the sealed phial. Then, on touching the living flesh with the hollow pin, the fatal fluid would be injected like the fang of a serpent. It was strongly recommended that the victim be approached while asleep, and, if possible, the instrument should be applied to the scalp, as the hair would then hide the puncture. The pin and phial must at once be got rid of--by burning, if possible.

This mode of destroying life was quite simple and effective--and it was popular.

Italy has ever been the home of the poisoner. From the earliest days the subtle poisons came thence, and to-day there lived in that obscure rock-village the man to whose deadly preparation hundreds of villainous deaths in various towns and cities had been due. He, the man charged with the cure of souls--the man who gabbled Mass each day in that gloomy church heavy with the odour of incense--supplied men and women with the wherewithal to destroy life, to sweep away their enemies, and to profit by the sudden death of their friends.

In every prefecture of police in Europe it had been suspected that there existed a man who supplied secretly some subtle and remarkable poison to purchasers. But so cleverly had Don Mario acted, and so wary was he always, that he had never been suspected.

He had clients who wrote again and again for that curious little outfit; and often when he received from far distant cities those repeat orders he wondered what was in progress, and longed to know the tragic truth. One success always induced the perpetrator to effect a further _coup_. As many as half a dozen times had the order been repeated in certain cases, which showed plainly that one victim after another had fallen.

In the few cases in the South of Europe where the puncture had been discovered, it had invariably been attributed to the bite of a venomous snake--so closely did it resemble it. And yet no reptile had been discovered.

Presently he took out a second outfit, phial and pin complete, and, carefully packing it, addressed it to Herr Herman Mayer, at the poste-restante in Cologne. Both packets he placed in the capacious pocket of his old cassock, his intention being to send them over the mountains into Perugia on the morrow, to be dispatched by post from there. He was too wary either to receive correspondence or dispatch the “extracts” from the little post office at Santa Lucia.

Before the dull, gilt altar, with its tawdry decorations, this man so often chanted, with that slow, droning, nasal intonation: “_Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam. Et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum, dele iniquitatem meam_.” And yet he dispatched that fatal extract, well knowing for what dastardly purpose it was required. He always sent the little outfit anonymously. The letters to the mysterious Signor Corradini were forwarded from the newsvendors in Dean Street, Soho, thence to a house in the Place Vert in Antwerp, whence they were sent to a friend in Paris, who, in turn, sent them to the _curato_ of Santa Lucia--the pious, sedate, and sympathetic priest who led such a quiet and colourless life. Yet this man, who fasted daily before saying Mass, and who was so observant of all the rules of his religion, was reaping a golden harvest from those anxious and eager to commit murder without risk of detection.

Besides old Alexandrovski of Odessa, an ex-professor at the Imperial Hospital at Moscow, recently arrested, Don Mario was the only regular and reliable purveyor of poisons in Europe--truly a highly lucrative undertaking.

The quick growth of his secret clientèle had been remarkable. Apparently one person recommended him to another, even though the recommendation was in itself tantamount to an admission of guilt. Truly any prohibited profession always prospers.

Of a sudden, as he reflected, it seemed to occur to him to test the potency of the liquid he was about to dispatch to Cologne and Chartres. Therefore he took a third needle, and, after filling it slowly, drew out a struggling rabbit from the cage.

With a quick movement he injected the deadly fluid into the animal’s blood.

The effect was almost electrical. In twenty seconds the poor animal lay dead.

The hook-nosed old priest watched the result, and grunted in satisfaction.

He, the man who always expressed such solicitude for the welfare of the poor of the village; he to whom the ignorant _contadini_ looked for guidance and assistance; the man beloved even by those ruffianly men who were little better than the bygone brigands of the Maremma, was of strangely complex character. His heart bled for those starving _contadini_ who were little better than the slaves of the _padrone_ who lived in wealth and luxury away in Perugia, Siena or Rome; and yet he could look on at the tortured agony of those dumb animals without the slightest trace of feeling. He sold those deadly little outfits, fully aware that by their agency innocent men and women, even children, were being sacrificed by the crafty criminal to secure his or her own dastardly ends.

Suddenly noticing the dog’s body lying there, mute evidence of the terrible potency of his most recent discovery, he took it, and, dragging it forth out of the door, flung it away into the copse.

Afterwards he returned and cleansed his hands in the bucket of water standing in the corner of the kitchen.

The ancient manuscript was lying half curled up upon the table, and this he carefully rolled, prior to replacing it in his pocket.

Suddenly, without warning, he gave vent to a low, horrified shriek. He noticed that upon the faded parchment some of the fatal powder had been spilt.

And he had touched it! His hand had come into contact with it, for the tips of his two fingers looked dusty.

“_Dio mio!_” he shrieked in terror. “I--I never noticed it!” and, dashing across to the bucket, he again plunged both hands frantically into the water.

“Surely I am not to be the first victim of my own preparation! But--_Santa Madonna!_--I feel a pain--a strange pain down the spine!” and he placed both hands behind his back, declaring to himself that fiery pains seemed to be shooting through him.

There was an absence of pain in his hands. The poison had been absorbed rapidly and was effecting its work. The spinal cord was already attacked. It was the first symptom!

He stood rigid, aghast, as the horrible truth became only too apparent.

“_Madre di Dio!_” he shrieked wildly again. “I--I’m poisoned! I----” and he stood stiff, his eyes starting from his head, his jaws fixed, in unspeakable terror.

His limbs were trembling violently. He felt constriction in the throat, tingling and numbness in the hands and feet, and loss of muscular power.

“_Diamine!_ It was my own fault! I should have been more careful!” gasped the unhappy man, looking helplessly around his improvised laboratory. “It is Fate!--accursed Fate--that I should be the first to die by the deadly compound I have rediscovered--to die the death of a dog!”

Violent spasms seized him. He felt that he could not breathe, and a cold perspiration stood in beads upon his brow. But still there was no pain in the tips of his fingers which had come into contact with the fatal powder. His face and hands were livid.

Of a sudden he left the table against which he had been supporting himself, and staggered across to the drawer which stood half open.

From it he snatched up a little hypodermic syringe, and, with the last strength he possessed, filled it from a small phial, and stuck the needle into his left wrist.

Next second he fell heavily forward upon the floor, his limbs stiff and rigid, his mouth spasmodically closed. The eyes protruded, the pupils were dilated, as though he were peering in horror into the torment beyond.

A sharp spasm shot through him, causing his whole body to shake violently.

Then all was still--the stillness of death.