A COMPLETE CURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2667, 26 April 1905, Page 79

A COMPLETE CURE.

The ladies had just left the table, and there had fallen upon the men the little silence which accompanies the lighting of cigars and marks the period of transition to, a different mood.

The host opened the conversation in the classic anecdotal manner, and as he talked easily to the whole table the Russian watched him covertly from what had been the right of the beautiful hostess. Across the table, the soft flush of the vine upon the aristocratic, cheek, the Honourable Percy Wyndham watched them both from under his drooping lids. The yellow eyes of the Russian were searching, covertly alert, as they had sought his entrance to the house; reaching, feeling 1 , peering, playing, with the soft tiiekss persistence of a hungry tongue of flam© licking about, testing and trying the clefts and crannies of a fresh fagot. The Englishman, on the other hand, waited and watched steadily and stolidly, as one waiting fox the fuse to burn to its base. At the distant end of the table, the host, calm, graceful, and dignified, discoursed easily oi general topics, smoothly and with perfect peise, albeit with flashes of wit and dry humour interspersed ; the latter was the most puzzling to certain keenly analytical guests expectant of subtle ambiguities. A hostile admiration came gradually to displace the puzzled conjecture of the Slav. The situation appealed to his love of the dramatic ; also" his fondness of finesse. He regarded with expectancy this man whose Lares and Penates he was seeking to profane, and of whose, honour he longed to make a mockery. Twice the Russian had been cautioned, and but three days previously the warning had come from the husband, more in the nature of a threat. Be had been prepared for this last, but the manner of its delivery was unexpected, and the language in which it was conveyed savoured rather of the tersely practical as used to a servant than of tfbe formally polite demanded of the situation by a continental code of ethics.

Hurrying to a patient, the surgeon had caught sight of the Russian, and ordered his coachman, to draw up at the curb. Before the astonished Slav could adjust the psychic atmosphere he heard a clear voice cutting the Babel about him:

" Prince Veslenskoi, pray call to mind the matter of which I spoke to you at the opera a month ago. You have not followed my directions, and I wish to warn you for the last time. Do not interrupt me, sir [sternly]. This is the last warning that you will get — so remember what I say. I have no time to talk with you — not the inclination foi that matter. I am already late to an important consultation ! "

In an angry maze a watch-cover had snapped, the brougham door had slapped in -the Prince's face, and he was left on the ccrb impotently gnawing his heavy lip and watching the rapidly-vanishing vehicle merge with the eddying crowd.

The following afternoon the Prince had deliberately called upon the wife of the surgeon, although it was not her day at home. Rather to his surprise, she had received him, but it had seemed to him that her manner was slightly distant. The Tartar blood had rebelled bitterly at the threat of the husband, which had been delivered in a way that had nonplussed Mm for the moment, but his call was sheerly a defiance ; not a gallantry,, as had been the case previously.

The following day he Tiad been astonished to receive an invitation to dine a? the house of the surgeon. At first the guile of the man had arisen in .suspicion ; thin with, an assumption of victorious contempt he had shown the invitation, to the Honourable Percy, with whom he was jAill on terms of intimacy. The Englishman read it, scowled, and pondered. Then he laughed nastily.

" I fancy you are right, Ivan. The man is a worm after all. He has turned twice to no purpose, and now he seeks to burrow into the muck. It's plain enough. Even here in America I suppose a woman is safe from slander as long as the husband countenances her innocent pastime. Evidently the husband has decided to niake the best oi it and take you up officially. I must say I am surprised, however. I have only met him onee — and he didn't impress me as a bit that sort."

Now as the Russian studied his host from the far end of the table he found his fiist doubts thrown back to him. The surgeon was past middle age, grey of beard and hair and eye, palid, colourless j insignificant until he spoke, wlien the mind of the man threw the body under a strong light, where it seemed to expand and jjrow.

It seemed to the Prince that a big soul might be contained in this small stature, and well contained at that.

"He will find pretext to speak with me alone before I leave," said the Russian to himself. "I am in his thoughts, oncl when he gives me the sign we will talk piivately, and I will tell him some of the things that have been in my mind since he spoke to me as if T had been a serf."

Thought or fear of violence may have ciosscd the brain of this scion of a caste that juggled with murder and saw humorous diversion in the brutal physical ; logic and sense of proportion put such fancies from his mind.. "The man is intellectual, scholarly, no doubt, and skilful, but passionate — bnh ! He is almost a disembodied nand !" His imagination saw him shrink from aught of corporal force. "He lacks subtlety, nevertheless he is sufficiently sensitive to fe-el the sting of my words when f shall politely point out to him the futility of one cast in his mould attempting to thwart the passions of a man whose forbears have never known restraint."

Skilfully, insidiously, with the light, purposely unconscious intuitiveness of the man who would herd thoughts, the surgeon had by a ripe touch at the right time interested this one with his neighbour, that one with his vis-a-vis, until the general conversation had become separately dual. Preventing the recurrence to plurality of interest he had himself opened a conversation with the Prince, encouraging the Englishman to a discussion of pheasant-shooting with his neighbour. The topics of the surgeon stepped lightly" from travel to literature, literature to art, art to collecting, and "objets de yerlu" ; dwelling jestingly on the perennial youth of heart of the faddist.

"And you?" said the Prince. "What, then, is your — fad?" "I have been for many years a collector of antique weapons, and may even claim to be something of an authority," replied the host with a conscious pride which men have in their pastimes who have it not in the excellence of their serious work. "My enthusiasm reached its perihelion last summer while in Germany, where I think I secured a weapon of great value. It is a pistol of the old wheel-lock type, similar to those used back in 1520 by the German reiters, or mercenary cavalry, but the feature about it that is of the greatest interest to me is the mere fact that there appears to have been a crude attempt to rifle the barrel."

"Ah, but someone must have attempted to do that sinee — many years since."

"I think not," interrupted the surgeon with misleading warmth,- "for the weapon had been recently found in an excavation of the masonry of a dungeon in one of the old castles in a search for a mythical treasure- that was supposed to have been hidden there. The pistol is certainly over three hundred years old. Perhaps you would like to see it? I have it in my office with some other curious antique ■weapons that might interest you. Would you like to see it?"

T?i 3 eyes of the Prince narrowed ; his smile grew radiant. His voice was vibrantly soft.

"Vraiment," he murmured — "I should be charmed."'

The host arose and gracefully excused himself, begging the other guests not to disturb themselves until they had finished their cigars.

"The Prince is interested in a curious old weapon — a pistol which I have in my collection," he explained, "We will join you a little later." The eyes of the Honourable Percy clung to them as they left the room. Rather to the surprise of the Prince his host l°d him through the drawing room, where the ladies w-ere chatting over coffee and cordials.

The hostess looked up in surprise, but her husband explained :

"We will not disturb you just yet — I am going to take the Prince to my office to show him my collection of antique weapons. - I am fortiinate in having found a man who sympathises with me in my monomania."

"Alors, when we have finished we will return, and I will revel in my monomania — beauty in its most divine form!" murmured the Prince, with a wave of regard which singled every woman in the group, and settled upon the hostess.

They ascended a gradual slope of deeply carpeted steps, and passed down a hall to a large room in which the atmosphere underwent an abrupt transition from th© social to the professional. The surgeon motioned to his guest to enter, and following, swung the door carelessly, behind him. At the click of the spring lock the Russian smiled, and, walking to the desk, lit a cigarette from the low-trimmed oil lamp that glowed softly beneath a ruby shade.

The surgeon waved his guest to a divan across the room and opposite the broad mahogany desk. This position was the scale where lives were weighted, death sentences passed, and the vital loan negotiated at varying rates of interest.

The surgeon slipped into his great desk chair, rested one elbow on the heavy rampart in front of him, dropped his narrow bearded chin into the ball of his hand, rested the other fist upon his hip, elbow raised ; all with a co-ordination that bespoke years of habitude. From this moral stronghold his pale grey eyes rested thoughtfully upon the Prince, whose warm graciousness began to congeal under the dispassionate coldness of the scrutiny. "My friend," remarked the surgeon suddenly, "were you not once in the diplomatic service?"

"I had for a time that honour," replied the Russian in slight surprise. "But vrhyl"

"Oh, nothing — I was merely thinking what influence, will do for a man ! Pardon me if I say that you seem so ill-qualified for such an appointment !"

A smile, baffling to the Prince, lurked in the corners of the thick-lipped mouth of the surgeon, ambiguous, half-hidden beneath the edges of the colourless beard.

A flash shot up from under the long lashes of the Prince ; his voice was caressingly soft. "Yes? Perhaps Monsieur le Doeteur will explain." "Directly— but first about the pistol — did you understand?' "Ah — surely 3*ou would not so far doubt my intelligence as to intimate that it was not perfectly clear to me that the pistol was but the pretext for a private inter-

The pale eye 1 ? payed over him inscrutably ; there vras a moment's silence, while the insolent assurance of the Slav froze about the edges. "Was that all that was conveyed to your mind?" inquired the host, the suggestion of a drawl thinly outlining the words. The mind of the Russian went forward, drew back, tried this and that corner of the intent of the other, as a ferret tries the corners of a strange prison. The search vain, he fell back upon Mongolian vacuity of word and eye. His host leaned forward ; his voice quickened and intensified. % "We will come to the pomt — time is brief. I have once forbidden your attentions to my wife, which prohibition you have seen fit to openly defy. I have then repeated the injunction, accompanying it with a direct warning — which you have also chosen not only to disregard, but to challenge. What is your object and intention ':" A look of pain was manifest upon the powerful features of the Prince. He threw up his hands with a Latin gesture of despair. '•But, my dear fri-end," he protested in the vibrant purr of a tiger, '"it is that you so utterly fail to understand — and I so strongly fortified in the honour of my attitude towards madame. Had there been in my heart one atom of the consciousness of guilt, your directions and wishes would have been observed. As it was, I felt that I owed it to myself, as well as to madame, not to behave in a manner suggestive of any quondam intimacy. Nothing could be farther from my wish than to have my admiration in any way Gomproinising. My devotion is — how do you say? — platonic ! ' Slowly, carefully, missing no detail, the eyes of the surgeon bathed every feature ol the Slav. They noted the thickly-set, heavy-thewed but supple figure, the freshly manicured gorilla-like hands, hairy as an ape's, the well-groomed animal face that suggested the Neolithic age as modified by a French valet de chambre, the Kalmuck cheek bones and barbaric Tartar eves'.

"Platonic!"' He threw back Lis head, but tlie click of the jaws cut short his laugh. "About the pistol,*' he remarked, abruptly. Without removing his eyes, now baneful in their insipidity, his hand went deftly to a drawer and drew thfffrefrom a long and curious weapon, which he laid upon the desk beside the case record book.

" This is not ihe weapon of which I spoke —but it will answer. It is a curious tool; twi feet long, as you see, and throws a ball the size of a pigeon's egg. Moreover, it is accurate in aim. I would let you examine it, but at present it is primed and loaded with slugs and ball. I keep it so for burglars, thieves, sneaks, liars, and such, feeling it to be more eflicacious than any modern weapon that I have. My wife and the servants ha^e been warned that it is loaded. Ah — would you J Sit down !" With the twist of a cat the Prince had' found his feet. Two springs would have taken him behind the heavy desk, but as his yellow eyes peered into the black, gaping enigmatical chamber of death, then flew upward to the remorseless face above the obsolete, aim, the power faded from the heavy nmscles ; struggling for calm, he s.ink back upon the couch, while the rich blood faded from the primitive face, and the sweat stood in beads on the broad' Slavic forehead.

"Would you, then, murder me?" The voice was controlled, but the efi'crt was visible.

I see no xea-

" Such was my intention, son to alter it."

"In cold blood? — without giving me a chance to defend myself? " " Oh, you fool — you great hulking brainless animal ! Do we give the dog that kills our lambs a chance to defend itself? Do you think your fecord is not known to me? You who come of a nation nourished on intrigue, can you not appreciate the knowledge that comes by devious paths to one in my position. Did you not swear to more than match them here? Did you not say in a cafe two weeks ago that there was nothing to dread from the American husband?"

The bloodless muscles in the face of the Prince fell in slack folds, forming new lines. He licked his thin lips with a drytongue. Pride, of which some was left lJm, prevented the attempt to speak.

" Yoti a diplomat !" pursued the surgeon in a voice^pf cold, dispassionate contempt. " You flaneur — with the finesse of a carthorse! Because you are thewed tike a bull and tusked like a boar; because you are said to have received a mediaeval training in the use of clumsy weapons, and because you have killed a man or two in what you please to call an affair of honour, having previously assailed the fair fame of some of the womankind, you consider yourself a dangerous man! You will no longer be when I get through with yon 1 " No trace of hate or malevolence slipped from the mind of the speaker through tlie. pale, colourless eyes ; there was only contempt mingled with- a quiet assurance ; a satisfied assumption of a responsibility iin(poaed by fate. It was an electric storm, sans the thunder ; lightning, striking noiselessly, the- more terrifying for lack of accompanying incident. Pride_ took flight through lack of comprehension of the forces invoked in this enigmatical man. The heart of the Prince fled out of him, as a savage might flee before the rays of a searchlight. Primitive man begged for his life at the feet of a god. Voice and) function returned with the flight of pretence. The voice of the Russian came in a

growl — not of savagery, but rather from lack of moisture sucked from the throat by the hammering heart. "You will, then, murder me? What, then, will become, of you? You would not immolate yourself for an undeserved vengeance ! *' " Hardly," replied the flat voice of the surgeon. " That doos not enter my plans. Why, you thick-headed biute, did you notice my pains in telling the men thnfc we were going to examine my collection of weapons? Did you not attach significance to the leading you like a hog to the slaughter through the ladies' di awing room and reiterating my evidence? I am surprised — and you a diplomat ! ' " Hut I do not understand " "Of course you don't ! But you would know — if you had ever collected weapons — that it is* not ususual to come across ona that has been loaded, perhaps recently, and from which the charge has never been withdrawn. For instance, this weapon in my hand was loaded wh. n n I got it — but (softly) it has. since been fired 1 and carefully reloaded. "' , "But it will be evident that " " That I was showing you the -weapon and accidentally discharged it. There may be suspicion, but there will be no proofs — and do you understand the strength of my position as regards the personal equation? " His lean, supple, surgeon's hand played caressingly over the- grip of the weapon, and he eyed the Russian as he might eye a malignant growth shortly to be extirpated. " Prince, our time is passing," he remarked seriously. The weapon fell into the hollow of his hand with the same briskness that he would have picked tip an instrument to begin an operation. Slowly the long, heavy barrel straightened. " You are now going to die ! " An ante-mortem pallor seemed to spread - across the livid face of the Prince. "Not yet!" he gasped. "Ah — Dieu — penscz a votre — ame ! " "I have thought." A deeper timbre vibrated in the voice of the surgeon. " Life after life I have saved to its future opportunities. Yours will be my first conscious expenditure- Have you anything to say? I warn you not to cry out! * >o "Ah, Dieu — Dieu ! not that — not that!" The words were gasped from vivid lips. A cyanosis had spread over the withering features. Further efforts to articulate were followed in convulsive breathings. "No," came the flat voice in a slightly - higher key. "It is not aesthetic— this method. I have provided another if you%. care to employ it. It will possibly be easier for both of us. It is painless, and one is apt to drink from the wrong glass " sometimes. Drink the contents of that glass on the table on your right !" A heavy hand stretched gropinglydropped — swayed again upward — spilled half of the contents, drew the glass against the cold lips. A wolfish gulp, and the glass fell to the floor and rolled across the room.

The surgeon thrust the w«^ipon quickly into the drawer of his desk a.ad arose to his feet. No change was evident in his inscruiabfc expression.

"Prince," he remarked quietly, "the operation has been eminently successful! I think that I can guarantee you a perfect cure ! Now let us rejoin the ladies — we have been too long away!" The lips of the Prince moved, but emitted no sound. The surgeon glanced at him quickly, and walking to a cupboard poured a little water into a tumbler and dropped therein the contents of a powder. It is far easier to kil 1 a man than to watch one die.

"Drink this!" he commanded. Actuated by a reflex tho Prince obeyed. The surgeon, silent .against the wainscotting, ■watched the slow return of normal colour.

"Come," he said, a trifle impatiently, "let us return to the drawing room.*'

"But the — draught?" mumbled the Russian stupidly.

"It was nothing — a lithia tablet in solution. I brought you here to give you some treatment for an infatuation that might have resulted fatally. I think that I have ■effected a radical cure ; did I not, you would never leave this room alive!"

He stood for a moment in serious contemplation of his guest. "Come," impatiently: "you are all right now — let us go down'"