Those natures that are sanguinary towards beasts discover a natural propension to cruelty. After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the slaughter of men the freer.—Montaigne.

One day in November Mr. Mole received a little note by the hand of a small boy, who said he had just come from Mr. Crowe’s. It was from Spriggs, and in these words:

“Dear Mr. Walter,—

“Do come here at once if you anyways can, for poor missus has just expired in agonies awful for to behold. I have done just as you told me, and I will only give them into your own hands for fear of mistakes. Do pray come soon. I am in such a fluster, though I have expected it for a week or more.

“Your affectionate friend,

“Janet Spriggs.”

The half pound or so of striated involuntary muscle which in Mr. Mole did duty for a heart was thrown into a state of agitation by this epistle. He must be off to Mr. Crowe’s residence at once.

Entering the house by a back door opening into an alley at the side of the residence, he was unobserved by any one except the servants. Janet soon told him the circumstances of her mistress’s death. How at eleven o’clock she had given her a composing pill, the only one in the box. These pills had been ordered by Dr. Stanforth, who had seen the patient the previous day. How, an hour after, no sleep having supervened, she had given a little brandy and water, and a few mushrooms, which had been sent in by Mr. Crowe from the fruiterer’s. How, soon after partaking of this food, her poor mistress had been seized with faintness and vertigo, had become suddenly pale and pulseless. That she had immediately called her master, who was in his study, and by his orders had sent the page to Dr. Stanforth, who was not at home. That meanwhile Mrs. Crowe had got rapidly worse, had vomited several times, and died with convulsions in great agony. How she had adroitly managed to drop her handkerchief on her mistress’s pillow, and so contrived to provide her lover with the materials for an analysis. How, moreover, she had reserved in another handkerchief the remains of the dish which formed the patient’s last meal. One thing that excited the girl’s curiosity was the fact that on the previous night she was certain there were two pills in the little box on the mantel; whereas, although none had been taken during the night, only one remained when, by her master’s order, she gave the morning dose. Had the box been upset? Had the parlour maid, who arranged the room in the morning and made the fire, disturbed the box? She declared she had not touched it when Mr. Mole examined her, and he believed the girl.

The death certificate was filled up by Dr. Stanforth as follows:

This certificate was duly delivered to the registrar; and two others like it were forwarded to the assurance companies in each of which the life was insured for the sum of one thousand pounds.

Mr. Mole went away with his little parcel, and soon set to work in his own private room on his tests. From his observations on some mice, to which he gave an ethereal extract of the contents of the handkerchiefs, he was quite sure that muscarin or lorchelin had somehow found its way into the stomach of the deceased lady. But here was the difficulty. She had undoubtedly eaten of a dish of mushrooms previous to her death. Somehow or other a poisonous fungus might have got into that dish, by accident possibly, by intention more likely. Again, there was the mysterious incident of the pill. What was easier than to substitute a pill of bulbosin for one of the morphia pills which should have been given. Was it not strange that only one pill remained in a box which should have contained two if it had not been interfered with?

He must consult with Dr. Sones about this, and off he went to his place, taking with him all the materials for examination which he had left. Dr. Sones listened to his story with the interest of a toxicologist who was on the track of a terrible crime; for to that he agreed with Mr. Mole all the circumstances seemed to point.

“Leave everything with me for a week,” said he, “and then come again. Meanwhile, if I want you, I will write.”

Mrs. Crowe was buried in Highgate Cemetery, and the sincere condolences of all the staff were duly presented to the bereaved surgeon. Dr. Stanforth saw nothing at all peculiar in the circumstance of the death, and had not even thought of attributing it to other than a quite ordinary cause. After all, what was there to excite suspicion? There was some rather violent vomiting in a patient who was the subject of constant nausea, and the attendant symptoms of a chronically inflamed stomach. True, she died after a meal of mushrooms. Dangerous things at all times, she, of all people, should never have touched them; but they were some of the few articles of diet the poor lady ever fancied, and it was hard to deny them to her. “Had the mushrooms anything to do with her death?” asked Mr. Crowe. He thought not, except in causing perhaps an attack of acute dyspepsia. The fruiterer declared that it was impossible any deleterious fungus could have got into the basket; he had sold a dozen that same morning, and no other purchaser had found any fault with them.

At the expiration of the week Mr. Mole called upon Dr. Sones.

“You have,” said the latter, “not only the alkaloid muscarin here, but an acrid volatile principle which could not have remained in the mushrooms after cooking. This must have either been added to the dish after it left the kitchen, or been administered in some other form than the food in question. Now so powerful is this principle in the vomit in the handkerchief you have brought me, that I have come to the conclusion it could only have been derived from the Russian species we investigated together last year. I know no English fungus which contains it in precisely this form. Again, in the remains of the dish in the other handkerchief, though I find lorchelin plentifully, I do not find the irritant poison I have mentioned. I should conclude, therefore, that this was administered some other way.”

“The pill!” cried Mr. Mole. “Wasn’t it in the pill? Was not the box tampered with, and was not a pill compounded of this irritant poison substituted for the harmless morphia ones the box previously contained?”

“That is quite likely, and the poison either given as medicine, or added surreptitiously to the dish after it was prepared.”

To Dr. Stanforth, Mr. Crowe’s easy-going, amiable colleague, as we have said, the case presented no peculiar features whatever. Very few cases did so to this optimistic, complacent gentleman. His was the charity that thinketh no evil, and considered everything was “for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” Perhaps, however, it was the nil admirari principle that most influenced him. He had acquired a certain distinction in his profession by having statistics ready for every class of case coming under his notice in his speciality, and it would have detracted from his glory to have permitted himself to be surprised at anything which might happen to a lady patient. “Had he ever seen such a case before?” some excited general practitioner who thought he had something interesting to show him would demand, only to be coolly set down with the reply, “Oh, certainly. As near as I can tell without reference to my notes, this makes the thirteenth case of the kind that I have examined since my connection with the hospital.”

When, therefore, Dr. Stanforth had heard all the symptoms exhibited by Mrs. Crowe on the morning of her decease, he was not the least surprised; he had his theory ready for any emergency.

“Ah, my dear Crowe, this is just what I always expected would happen to your poor wife. In cases of cirrhosis like hers, find the proportion of deaths, with just such symptoms as you describe, to be one in 238-1/3.”

Dr. Stanforth prided himself in his arithmetic, in which he was always very exact. He usually went in for decimals, but to-day was satisfied with vulgar fractions. He always had a similar case to illustrate the one under notice, and was equally precise in his way of mentioning it. “I had just such another case in the year 1861. It was Easter Monday, and I remember it was snowing hard. I was called to a draper’s in St. John’s Wood. You know the shop opposite the church? Just such a case as this. The poor heart-broken husband, just like yourself, was beside himself with grief, and reproached himself for having given his wife, poor thing, some macaroni he had just got from Naples. She was seized precisely as Mrs. Crowe, and died within two hours after eating it. He would have it there were cholera germs in the macaroni. The cholera was raging in Naples just then. You remember. Don’t you remember? Ah, I do! I lost my beautiful cousin, Lady Arethusa Standoph, who was seized with it while staying at Castellamare close by. One in every 625-1/4 visitors to Naples died that year of cholera, of all nationalities that is to say; of English only one in every 889-1/2.”

Dr. Stanforth was a princely, not to say kingly, liar. When he did a thing, he did it royally, and he lied without niggardliness and with the precision of an actuary. Perhaps this peculiar trait in Dr. Stanforth’s character had recommended him to Mr. Crowe’s favour. Be this as it may, the latter was well pleased to hear that mushrooms could have had no possible connection with his wife’s death. He was willing to waive his superior physiological attainments in favour of his colleague’s statistics. So far from pressing his opinion with his usual persistence, he bowed in acquiescence, and thereby flattered Dr. Stanforth immensely. Of course it would have been most unpleasant to have had an inquest, and this admirable certificate saved all that annoyance. Both the insurance companies paid the money, and Mr. Crowe seemed disposed to bear his bereavement with exemplary resignation. He went on with his work much as before, solacing himself, however, with frequent visits to Aunt Janet and Mildred. Both ladies felt it their duty to be as kind and sympathetic as possible, and he was urged to visit them as often as he conveniently could. They got up nice little dinner parties for him; and as Mildred, in her kind, consoling way, did her best to solace the widower in his affliction, he began to hope he was daily growing in her favour. He did his best to throw cold water on her hospital scheme, as he foresaw such a project would be most prejudicial to his order, and would set an example that would be surely followed by other faddists, much to the injury of scientific medicine; but he had to be guarded in his treatment of this subject, because he saw the new object was deeply set in the hearts of both ladies. When he found it was hopeless to try and hinder it, and that it was an accomplished fact, he set to work to turn the scheme to his own advantage. But to little purpose. There was no chance for him at Nightingale House. His peculiarities and principles were too well known to be disguised, and nobody believed he was capable of conversion.

But gradually it came to be noticed that everybody was fighting shy of Mr. Crowe. The most unpleasant rumours about the cause of his wife’s death were in the air. Nobody spoke out, nobody seemed to know anything precisely; but all at once Mr. Crowe was blown upon.

That nobody spoke was perhaps too much to say, for Mr. Crowe had one open and bitter enemy on the staff of St. Bernard’s. Mr. Ringrose, the surgeon, had been quarrelling with him for years in a gentlemanly and polite sort of way. Each had presented the other to the council as having done something unprofessional. Crowe accused Ringrose of having killed a man through operating on him when drunk; and Ringrose, who was a popular man, had branded Crowe as an atheist who was damaging the reputation of the school by seducing the young men from the Christian faith by his blasphemous remarks and ridicule of Scripture. Mr. Ringrose did not scruple to say that, if anybody wanted to get rid of his wife, he could not do better than learn physiology. And so what with speaking out, and what with shrugging his shoulders and hinting the darkest things possible, he managed to imbue everybody in the place with dire suspicions about Mr. Crowe. Soon everybody got hold somehow of the whole circumstances connected with the death of the lady; and though there was not enough known to make a legal investigation desirable or possible, there was abundant reason for shunning Mr. Crowe’s society. The students soon caught the infection, and all sorts of graffiti were blazing openly on the walls of the college; toadstools surmounted by a death’s head and cross-bones; legends such as—

“Crow’s-foot, a poisonous plant of the order RanunculacÆ;” under which a wag added—

“But not half so deadly as Crowe’s hand, order PhysiologacÆ.”

One day Mr. Ringrose accidentally found that he had seated himself at a table in the refreshment department at the Army and Navy Stores facing Mr. Crowe, who was lunching off a dish of curried fowl, and surrounded by various little purchases which encumbered the chair next his own.

The men nodded coldly, but did not speak to each other. Mr. Ringrose, impelled by the demon of mischief, demanded of the waiter to come and attend to him.

“Have you any mushrooms?”

“No, sir. Mushrooms not in season, sir.”

“Of course not. How stupid of me!”

Mr. Crowe, under the glare of his enemy’s cruel eye, visibly winced; his face paled, and Ringrose could see that the arrow had gone home. The physiologist beckoned to a waiter, gave his number, paid his bill to the boy who came round for the money, picked up his little brown-paper parcels, and went off.

Mr. Ringrose felt sure that one murderer had lunched that day in decent company.

Now Mr. Mole had long been working to supplant his chief. He aimed at nothing less than the chair of physiology.

In a very short time things became so unpleasant for Mr. Crowe, that he was fain to resign his appointment as surgeon to the hospital, though for the present he retained his lectureship at the medical school.