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.