This evening Phillis was obliged to be at home early, but she cleared off the table, and put everything in order before leaving.
“You can breakfast on the remains of the chicken,” she said, as she put it in the pantry.
And as Saniel accompanied her with a candle in his hand, he saw that she had thought not only of his breakfast for the following day, but for many days, besides carrots for the rabbits.
“What a good heart you have!” he said.
“Because I think of the rabbits?”
“Because of your tenderness and thoughtfulness.”
“I wish I could do something for you!”
As soon as she was gone he seated himself at his desk and began to work, anxious to make up for the time that he had given to sentiment. The fact that his work might not be of use to him, and that his experiments might be rudely interrupted the next morning or in a few days, was not a sufficient reason for being idle. He had work to do, and he worked as if with the certitude that he would pass his examinations, and that his experiments of four years past would have a good ending, without interference from any one.
This was his strong point, this power to work, that was never disturbed or weakened by anything; not by pleasure or pain, by preoccupation or by misery. In the street he could think of Phillis, be he hungry or sleepy; at his desk he had no thought of Phillis, neither of hunger nor of sleep, no cares, no memories; his work occupied him entirely.
It was his strength, and also his pride, the only superiority of which he boasted; for although he knew that he had others, he never spoke of them, while he often said to his comrades:
“I work when I will and as much as I wish. My will never weakens when I am at work.”
This evening he worked for about an hour, in his usual condition of mind; neither sheriffs, nor Jardine, nor Caffie troubled him. But having to draw upon his memory for certain facts, he found that it did not obey him as usual; there were a hesitation, a fogginess, above all, extraordinary wanderings. He wrestled with it and it obeyed, but only for a short time, and soon again it betrayed him a second time, then a third and fourth time.
Decidedly he was not in a normal state, and his will obeyed in place of commanding.
There were a name and a phrase that recurred to him mechanically from time to time. The name was Caffie, and the phrase was, “Nothing easier.”
Why should this hypothesis to strangle Caffie, of which he had lightly spoken, and to which he had attached no importance at the moment when he uttered it, return to him in this way as a sort of obsession?
Was it not strange?
Never, until this day, had he had an idea that he could strangle a man, even as wicked as this one, and yet, in talking of it, he found very natural and legitimate reasons for the murder of this scamp.
Had not Phillis herself condemned him?
To tell the truth, she had added that Providence or justice should be his executor, but this was the scruple of a simple conscience, formed in a narrow environment, to which influence he would not submit.
Had he these scruples, this old man who coldly, and merely for the interest of so much a hundred on a dot, advised him to hasten the death of a woman by drunkenness, and that of an infant in any way he pleased?
When he reached this conclusion he stopped, and asked himself whether he were mad to pursue this idea; then immediately, to get rid of it, he set to work, which absorbed him for a certain time, but not so long a time as at first.
Then, finding that he could not control his will, he turned his thoughts to Caffie.
It was only too evident that if he had carried out the idea of strangling Caffie, all the difficulties against which he had struggled, and which would overwhelm him, if not the following day, at least in a few days, would have disappeared immediately.
No more sheriffs, no more creditors. What a deliverance!
Repose, the possibility of passing examinations with a calm spirit that the fever of material troubles would not disturb—in this condition he felt his success was assured.
And his experiments! He would run no danger of seeing them rudely interrupted. His preparations were not cast out-of-doors; his precious culture-tubes were not broken; his vases, his balloons, were not at the second-hand dealer’s. He continued this train of thought to the results that he desired for him, glory; for humanity, the cure of one, and perhaps two, of the most terrible maladies with which it was afflicted.
The question was simple:
On one side, Caffie;
On the other side, humanity and science;
An old rascal who deserved twenty deaths, and who would, anyhow, die naturally in a short time;
And humanity, science, which would profit by a discovery of which he would be the author.
He saw that the perspiration stood out on his hands, and he felt it run down his neck.
Why this weakness? From horror of the crime, the possibility of which he admitted? Or from fear of seeing his experiments destroyed?
He would reflect, think about it, be upon his guard.
He had told Phillis that intelligent men, before engaging in an action, weigh the pro and con.
Against Caffie’s death he saw nothing.
For, on the contrary, everything combined.
If he had had Phillis’s scruples, or Brigard’s beliefs, he would have stopped.
But, not having them, would he not be silly to draw back?
Before what should he shrink? Why should he stop?
Remorse? But he was convinced that intelligent men had no remorse when they came to a decision on good grounds. It was before that they felt remorse, not after; and he was exactly in this period of before.
Fear of being arrested? But intelligent men do not let themselves be arrested. Those who are lost are brutes who go straight ahead, or the half-intelligent, who use their skill and cunning to combine a complicated or romantic act, in which their hand is plainly seen. As for him, he was a man of science and precision, and he would not compromise himself by act or sentiment; there would be nothing to fear during the action, and nothing afterward. Caffie strangled, suspicion would not fall upon a doctor, but on a brute. When doctors wish to kill any one, they do it learnedly, by poison or by some scientific method. Brutal men kill brutally; murder, called the assassin’s profession.
A few minutes before, he was inundated by perspiration; this word froze him.
He rose nervously, and walked up and down the room with long, unsteady steps. The fire had long since gone out; out-of-doors the street noises had ceased, and in his brain resounded the one word that he pronounced in a low tone, “Assassin!”
Was he the man to be influenced and stopped by a word? Where are the rich, the self-made men, the successful men, who have not left some corpses on the road behind them? Success carries them safely, and they achieved success only because they had force.
Certainly, violence was not recreation, and it would be more agreeable to go in his way peacefully, by the power of intelligence and work, than to make a way by blows; but he had not chosen this road, he was thrown into it by circumstances, by fate, and whoever wishes to reach the end cannot choose the means. If one must walk in the mud, what matters it, when one knows that one will not get muddy?
If Caffie had had heirs, poor people who expected to be saved from misery by inheriting his fortune, he would have been touched by this consideration, undoubtedly. Robber! The word was yet more vile than that of assassin. But who would miss the few banknotes that he would take from the safe? To steal is to injure some one. Whom would he injure? He could see no one. But he saw distinctly an army of afflicted persons whom he would benefit.
A timid ring of the bell made him start violently, and he was angry with himself for being so nervous, he who was always master of his mind as of his body.
He opened the door, and a man dressed like a laborer bowed humbly.
“I beg your pardon for disturbing you, sir.”
“What do you want?”
“I called on account of my wife, if you will be so good as to come to see her.”
“What is the matter with her?”
“She is about to be confined. The nurse does not know what to do, and sent me for a doctor.”
“Did the nurse tell you to come for me?”
“No, sir; she sent me to Doctor Legrand.”
“Well?”
“His wife told me he could not get up on account of his bronchitis. And the chemist gave me your address.”
“That is right.”
“I must tell you, sir, I am an honest man, but we are not rich; we could not pay you—immediately.”
“I understand. Wait a few minutes.”
Saniel took his instruments and followed the laborer, who, on the way, explained his wife’s condition.
“Where are we going?” Saniel asked, interrupting these explanations.
“Rue de la Corderie.”
It was behind the Saint Honore’ market, on the sixth floor, under the roof, in a room that was perfectly clean, in spite of its poverty. As soon as Saniel entered the nurse came forward, and in a few words told him the woman’s trouble.
“Is the child living?”
“Yes.”
“That is well; let us see.”
He approached the bed and made a careful examination of the patient, who kept repeating:
“I am going to die. Save me, doctor!”
“Certainly, we shall save you,” he said, very softly. “I promise you.”
He turned away from the bed and said to the nurse:
“The only way to save the mother is to kill the child.”
The operation was long, difficult, and painful, and after it was over Saniel remained a long time with the patient. When he reached the street a neighboring clock struck five, and the market-place had already begun to show signs of life.
But in the streets was still the silence and solitude of night, and Saniel began to reflect on what had occurred during the last few hours. Thus, he had not hesitated to kill this child, who had, perhaps, sixty or seventy years of happy life before it, and he hesitated at the death of Caffie, to whom remained only a miserable existence of a few weeks. The interests of a poor, weak, stunted woman had decided him; his, those of humanity, left him perplexed, irresolute, weak, and cowardly. What a contradiction!
He walked with his eyes lowered, and at this moment, before him on the pavement, he saw an object that glittered in the glare of the gas. He approached it, and found that it was a butcher’s knife, that must have been lost, either on going to the market or the slaughterhouse.
He hesitated a moment whether he should pick it up or leave it there; then looking all about him, and seeing no one in the deserted street, and hearing no sound of footsteps in the silence, he bent quickly and took it.
Caffie’s fate was decided.
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg