RALPH HARDWICKE'S CRIME,

Northern Advocate, 29 July 1893, Page 7

RALPH HARDWICKE'S CRIME,

CHAPTER XVI.

AN ARTIST IN MURDER.

(CONTTNTTED..)

He went on speaking as quietly and indifferently as if he woro referring to some trivial matter with which he himself was not in any connected —

while I, as I listened, scarcely dared to draw mv breath.

' I studied tho literature of homicide, in a general sense, as far as I was able. I saw at once that the chief point to be considered was to kill, and yet leave no trace of crime. That was the crux. If you did that, you did all. And I soon perceived that, if books wore to be trusted, in Italy, during the sixteenth century, and thereabouts, this main object of the aspiring homicide was continually attained. The means usorl, in such cases, was invariably poi&on. In literature, at any rate, tho Italian poisoners were proverbial.

'It was not to be overlooked that, since those days, science had advanced. Detection of crime by scientific methods had become the standard topic, for instance, of the newspaper leader writer, and of the sensational novelist. The Italian poisoners, one might say, were not detected because, in their days, science was in its infancy. In theso days of exact, unerring, scientific analysis, their deeds would have been made as plain as the sun at noon.

'Was this so?' . ■:) ■ ' 1 turned my attention to toxicology. I read the works of the latest authorities on poisons, among others the work of Mr Lewis Cowan.' As he mentioned Mr Cowan's name, Ralph Hardwicke smiled. ( The result was that I came to the conclusion that science, in its impartial onward march, had helped the criminal quite as much as it had helped the detective, and that it was just as possible to poison a man, without fear of detection, as it had ever been. ' The Italians were remarkable, not only for the poisons which they used, but also for the manner in which they conveyed their poisons to their victims. The modern, vulgar poisoner invariably poisons the victim's food, or medicine. or drink, or, at any rate, something which he puts into his stomach. 'In a case of illness the first question asked is, what has the patient ate or drank ? Post-mortem examination reveals it. And so, in nine ca?r out of ten, you have only toelor- 1 . L .c the recorded cases. The poisoner simply gives himself away. ' The greatest Italian artists never poisoned either food or drink. They never allowed their poisons to go into the stomach. They injected them either into the finger by means of a

ring, into the arm by means of a ,^ bracelet, or into the neck by means of a ttnecklace. Thoy rosortod to more

ingenious and delicate methods even than those. ' I had gone to study the Italian poisoners upon their native heath, and it chanced one day that I was passing through the Fiezza Palace with a Roman Cardinal, when, in one of the private apar tinea ts, he pulled up short and called lny attention to a cabinet. That is tho identical cabinet etanding in the corner there.' : l\;il;.vh Ifardwieke pointed to what Mr Voss had called the Medici cabinot. . ' ITo told mo, that Roman Cardinal, that i'ow pecplo over camo into that apartment, an 1 tliat that cabinet was ! nnvor shown to visitors. Ho lied. I Whether consciously or unconsciously L cannot say — hut ho liod. And it is chiefly because ho lied that I am now, my dear Otway, treating you as my father confessor. I will not say that your discovery of a previous Mrs ITardwiekehas had nothing- to do with tho in utter, I will not go so far as that ; but certainly I should never have told you what T am tolling you now if that Roman Cardinal has not lied in saying that that cabinet was never shown to visitors. ' Nina had been in Home the year before, and some fool or other had taken it into his head — I only learnt this too late, that fatal too late, my dear fellow, which we are all of us •destined, some time or other, to hear — I say that some fool or other had taken it into his head to show her over the Fiezza Palace. This fool was a friend of Old Ben's, was himself a bric-a-brac hunter, a man well-kno ,vn in Rome, and he introduced Nina to the Fiezza Palace for the sole purpose •of showing her this cabinet. He not only told her in what its peculiarity lay, and so on, but he lectured on it, so far as I can understand, for about two hours in the middle of a broiling summer's afternoon. Not only so, but he actually gave her a photograph of the cabinet. I have seen it, she has it still. And what with the photograph, and that old fool's prosing, and the legends which he told her of the dreadful deeds which that key had done, she has never forgotten that cabinet from that day to this. What that has to do with the sequel you will see. 'Directly I saw the cabinet and heard about the key, I said to myself that this was the very thing that I was looking for. If I could only plant that cabinet upon old Ben, he would soon cease to be a factor requiring consideration. ' T*ut it was not such an easy thing ' -j, to plant that cabinet upon old JJt! n. First of all, I had to get it out ; of the Fiezza Palace, and that did not look easy ; and then I had to insinuate it into old Ben's possession without allowing him. or any one else to suspect that it ever, in any sense, had ' been in mine. : L ' I managed to do the first thing— l ■ managed to get it out of the Fiezza \ Palace. I have found that in Rome ! 1 you can do a good many things wiih 1 money, and it cost me a surprising

sum of money to get that cabinet out of Pontifical keeping. The nest thing I had to do was to entrust it to a dealer for sale, with instructions that he was only to sell it to a particular person, and then for a song. The key he never had. It was never in his possession. He never saw it. He was innocently unconscious of there being anything peculiar about the cabinet as a babe unborn. I instructed him to toll the purchaser that the key required cleaning, and that it would be forwardod after the cabinet had been sent home. I imagine that that dealer thought that I was making a present with that display of eccentricity which is peculiar to Englishmen — and I lot that dealer think. As a matter of fact, ho was right. I was making a present — after a fashion of my own. ' That accommodating dealer took a little shop in the Brompton Road, his stock-in-trade consisting principally of that cabinet. So soon as he had settled down a little, I mentioned, casually and privately, to old Ben that I had noticed in that part of tho town what seemed to me a new dealer in suriosities. Exactly what I oxpected would happen did happen. A new curiosity shop was to old Ben what the smell of a fox is to a hound — he followed the scent as soon as he struck it. The next day he visited that dealer's shop, and the day after that the cabinet came home. ' Old Ben was in excelsis. So was I. ' Before that cabinet had made its appearance in Englandlhadvisitedthe East, and had there made some very peculiar and some very striking experiments with certain poisons which. — 1 happened to hear of. One in particular had appealed to my imagination as being, like the cabinet, just the thing I wanted. I arranged with its discoverer — I believe the gentleman I refer to can really claim to be its discoverer — whose residence at that time was at Cairo, to forward mo, at a moment's notioe, to an address in London, a certain quantity of this — article, which was to be freshly distilled, and which was to be eontainod in an air-tight cover. * Before the cabinet came home I wired to Cairo, and my wire was attended to with a really surprising celerity and punctuality. I charged the key, and I sent it, of course as coming from the dealer, to old Ben. • As, I believe, my dear old fellow, Mr Cowan has informed you, and you are therefore, without my telling you, aware, it was a peculiarity of "that particular poison that it lost its potency by being kept. When fresh from the still, less than a drop injected beneath the skin of a uiau, no matter where, would kill him as if by a flash of lightning. It's a fact. If you doubt it, try it — in the interests of the spreading abroad of the truth, and tho advancement of science. But the virtue— for such, in my eyes, I need > not observe it was — became diminishl ed when thp stuff grew stale. It rej j quired more and more of it, and it

took longer and longer to kill as the days, and even the hours, went by. Until, finally, it wouldn't kill at all, not if you injected a whole Jiogshead ' It had left still quite long enough by the time that it reached me. I had calculated — since I had been careful to arrange that the cabinet should come to okl Ben locked — that, directly ho got the key into his hands, like a child with a new toy, ho would not rest until he had unlocked it. I took it for granted, in other words, that, certain]}' within half a hour of the receipt of tho k<ry, he would be dead. ' I knew by what post tho key would reach him. I took caro to appear on tho premises within hnlf an hour of tho post's arrival — half an hour, that is, after it was in. I expected to find old Ben departed* and my icloa was to slip the key out of the lock, and to put in its place a harmless facsimile. BeEoro I had gone to bed that night that peculiar kov would have been improved out of existence. It was the most | beautifully jlnmed thing °* which you '■ ever hoard. 1 (JufortiXTifitely, as the poet too truly remarks, ' thd best laid plans o ( mice and men gang aft &&!<s•' .^7 1 best laid plan ' went all c aglny. 1 ' When I arrived, instead of finding old Ben a corpse, I found that ho had gone out to dinner. Some ass had come,- just as the post was in, and | insisted upon hftitliftg dear old Ben off with him then and thefo; 1 couldn't ask about the key— how was Ito know anything a'boufc it ? 1 You can take my word for it — on this occassion you really can-^that I did not spend a pleasant night. The next morning, as soon as decency permitted, I trotted round once more. This time I found old Ben roaring and raging, and calling down all the curses of all the gods upon Eyau's head, and upon thatdealer r 9 head, and upon the man who had hauled him out to dinner's head, and upon everybody else's head. Old Ben had lost the key ! My beautiful key ! My best planned key! The key over which ! I had spent days, and weeks, and ! months, and which had cost me— my I dear fellow, what that key had cost ! me, from first to last, I shouldn't dare |to tell you. He had put it—somewhere, and no O7:e knew where. <We hunted for the key, dear old Ben, Eyan, and I. I assure you that I was as keen in the chase as any one. But we never found it- You may fancy my sensations. I trotted round every day, sometimes half-a-dozen times a day. I took it for granted that old Ben would find it perhaps in his waistcoast-pocket or some equally impossible hiding-place, and that he would there ' and then proceed to slaughter himself at some wholly unexpected and most inconvenient moment. It would just have been like old Beii.' This man, Ealph Hardwicke, told all this with smiles, as if he had been recounting the finest joke in the world. But, all at once, he ceased to smile, and there came again instead that curious intensity of passion, which was all the more noticeable because it was j suggested rather than expressed. ' And that key never was found, until you found it, although Nina thinks it was. Ah, Otway, there's the mischief! If it were not for what Nina thinks, ten thousand Philip Bennions might rot before you would wiring a confession out of me, and before you would be able to place your finger on a clue which wotild lead you to the solution of my crime. ' Mind, I have exchanged no plain words with her, but I know what_ is passing, and what has been passing in my darling's mind. I know that she recognised that cabinet when first she saw it, and that she would, there and. then, have betrayed her recognition to Philip Bennion if it had not been that he had told her that it was I who had called his attention to the shop in which it had been purchased. ' Otway, it is not the least curious part of this my really curious story that I verily believe that, from the first, Philip Bennion knew me for what 1 am. I have no positive proof that this was so ; but ho was, as I have said, the shrewdest man 1 ever knew, and the more I. look back at the things which have gone, the stronger my conviction grows that he knew from "thn first that I was a man who would stick at nothing to gain a desired end. ' More ; although I know that he nover told, her I was married, when he saw how I longed for her, I do believe thai; lie dropped her a hint that under no circumstances could I make her my wife, and that he dropped her a still further hint that I was the sort of man to leave no stone unturned, either in hoavon or in hell — in spite of circumsLanues — to make her mine. Again I have no positive proof that this was so ; but f believe that that is what he did. (To be Continued.)

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