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Page 1 of 21929 · PDF PAGE 35
…nity of the proper kind of suicide. I beg my readers most earnestly not to doubt my statements: the notes of our experiments, left in my will to the greatest thinker now living, Professor von Buhle, will make clear the truth of my relation, and the great and terrible necessity of immediate, drastic, action. PART II I THE stunning physical fact of my husband's illness was the immense prostration. So strong a body, as too often the convulsions gave proof; such inertia with it! He would lie all day like a log; then without warning or ap- parent ca…
1929 · PDF PAGE 11
…ind a new means of communicating the details of my plan. I have thought it all out. I shall speak in a sort of rebus, which not even you will be able to understand unless you have all the piecesand the key. Mind you engrave upon your memory every word I say. The following day: Do you remember the taking of the old mill by the Prussians in 70? My difficulty is that I must give you the skeleton of the puzzle, which I cant do in words. But watch the line of my spade and my heelmarks, and take a copy. I did this with the utmost minuteness o…
1929 · PDF PAGE 53
…essors, however eminent, have any voice in the management of a private asylum in England, and I am certain that the Lunacy Commissioners will uphold me in my refusal to consider the question. It will then be clearly understood that this document
1929 · PDF PAGE 3
…he Peace, he added after a momentary pause. I knew it, cried the other excitedly. The trained legal mind is that of all others which will appreciate my story. Swear, then, he went on with sudden gravity, swear that you will never whisper to any living soul the smallest word of what I am about to tell you. Swear by the soul of your dead mother. My mother is alive, returned Bevan. I knew it, exclaimed his companion, a great and strange look of god-like pity illuminating his sunburnt face. It was such a look as one sees upon many statue…
1929 · PDF PAGE 14
I cannot now enter into his history, which you no doubt know in any case. I will only say that it was of such a character that these facts (of so curiously contra- dictory appearanceon the face of it) apply abso- lutely. However the tone of confidence which thrilled in Dodus messages, Pluck grapes in Burgundy; press vats in Cognac; ha! The souffle with the nuts in it is ready for us by the Seine, and the like, showed me that his giant brain had not only grappled with the problem, but solved it to his satisfaction. The plan was perfect; o…
1929 · PDF PAGE 36
… other. It was below, within, withdrawn. said to myself, He is dead! Then came Ar- thur's thought, I had better pretend to be mad. It will save her, perhaps; and it will be a change. I shall pre- tend I have killed her with an axe. Damn it! I hope she is not listening. I was now thoroughly awake, and told the driver to get home quickly. I hope she is killed in the motor; I hope she is smashed into a million pieces. O God! hear my one prayer! let an Anarchist throw a bomb and smash Magdalen into a million pieces! espe- cially the brain! and…
1929 · PDF PAGE 6
…a final proof of the in- nate and inherent devilishness of the universe. Insanity is the logical consequence of such a faith. No, sir, I will spare you the description. Bevan thought that there had already been too much description, and in his complacent English way surmised that Duguesclin was exaggerating, as he was aware that Frenchmen did. But he only remarked that it must have been terrible. He would have given a good deal, now, to have avoided the conversation. It was not altogether nice to be on a lonely platform with a self- confessed …
1929 · PDF PAGE 10
son to think highly of my intelligence. By a stratagem, he repeated with emphasis. I have a plan, he continued. It will take twenty- three days to communicate, if we are not interrupted; between three and four months to prepare; two hours and eight minutes to execute. It is theoretically possible to escape by air, by water, or by earth. But as we are watched day and night, it would be useless to try to drive a tunnel to the mainland; we have no aeroplanes or balloons, or means of making them. But if we could once reach the waters edge, …
1929 · PDF PAGE 15
Yes, said Dodu (continued the narrator), I have a better plan. I have a stratagem. I will tell it you tomorrow. The train which was to carry the narrator and his hearer to Mudchester came round the corner. That morrow, glowered Duguesclin, that morrow never came. The same sun that slew the spy broke the great brain of Dodu; that very afternoon, a gibbering maniac, they thrust him in the padded room, never again to emerge. The train drew up at the platform of the little junc- tion. He almost hissed in Bevans face. It was not Dodu …
1929 · PDF PAGE 54
…they were advanced matematicians. It is (I believe) the greatest factor that militates against human progress that great men assume they will be understood by others. Even such a master of lucid English as the late Pro- fessor Huxley has been so vitally misunderstood that he
1929 · PDF PAGE 18
Perhaps Monsieur will find there what he requires, he said coldly. Furtively and hurriedly, his glance divided between the forbidden book and the shop-door, his only safe- guard from intrusion the thought that nobody who en- tered would be in a position to throw stones at a fellow- culprit, Theodore Bugg turned over the pages. The book began mildly enough with the winged Vic- tory and only entered the rapids with La Gioconda. Thence, Niagra-like, one plunge to the abyssthe Venus de Milo. The blood flame to his face; his breath came hot and q…
1929 · PDF PAGE 38
… the meeting of the monster's teeth. I explained this to the doctor. No, said he, he is perfectly uncon- scious. Well, said I, he will howl about eighty times more. Doctor Kershaw looked at me curiously, but began to count. My calculation was correct. He turned to me, Are you a woman? No, said I, I am my husband's colleague. I think it is suggestion. You have hypnotized him? Never: but I can read his thoughts. Yes, I remember now; I read a very remarkable paper in Mind two years ago. That was child's play. But let me go on …
1929 · PDF PAGE 30
…suppose I should have gone mad. Thrice fortunate that I can warn humanity of what awaits each one. The great- est benefactor of his race will be he who discovers and explosive indefinitely swifter and more devastating than dynamite. If I could only trust myself to prepare Chloride of Nitrogen in sufficient quantity. . . . VI Arthur became listless and indifferent. The perfec- tion of love that had been our marriage failed without warning, and yet by imperceptible gradations. My awakening to the fact was, however, altogether sudden. It was one s…
1929 · PDF PAGE 41
…uld make believe Such a thought is to surrender one's honesty, to ab- dicate one's reason. It marked the final futile struggle of his will. The demon caught and crunched him, and the noisy delirium began anew. My flesh and blood rebelled. Taken with a deathly vomit, I rushed from the room, and resolutely, for a whole hour, diverted my sensorium from thought. I had always found that the slightest trace of tobacco smoke in a room greatly disturbed my power. On this occasion I puffed cigarette after cigarette with excellent effect. I knew nothi…
1929 · PDF PAGE 27
…ver thinking of my work. (My father is a canon of Peterborough Cathedral.) On the third day I received a telegram from Professor Blair, Will you be my wife? I had never realized myself as a woman, or him as a man, till that moment, and in that moment I knew that I loved him and had always loved him. It was a case of what one might call Love at first absence. My father recov- ered rapidly; I returned to Cambridge; we were married during the May week, and went immediately to Switzer- land. I beg to be spared any recital of so sacred a period …
1929 · PDF PAGE 52
…to the old abyss. I shall consequently cause this record to be widely distributed. The note-books of my work with Arthur (Vols, I CCXIV) will be edited by Professor von Buehle, whose marvellous mind may perhaps discover some es- cape from the destiny which menaces mankind. Every- thing is in order in these note-books; and I am free to die, for I can endure no more, and above all things I dread the onset of illness, and the possibility of natural or accidental death. NOTE I am glad to have the opportunity of publishing, in a journal so widely re…
1929 · PDF PAGE 4
… and showed it. After the siege, sir, she was honourably married to a nobleman, snapped Duguesclin. Do you think a man of my ancestry will permit a stranger to lift the shadow of an eyebrow against the memory of my great- grandmother? The Englishman protested that nothing had been further from his thoughts. I suppose so, proceeded the other more qui- etly. And the more, perhaps, that I am a convicted murderer. Bevan was now fairly alarmed. I am proud of it, continued Duguesclin. At the age of twenty-five my blood was more fiery than …
1929 · PDF PAGE 5
…an nightmare itself shadow that inferno, that limbo of the damned? My lan- guage is strong, sir; but no language can depict that hell. I will spare you the description. Sand, vermin, crocodiles, venomous snakes, miasma, mosquitoes, fe- ver, filth, toil, jaundice, malaria, starvation, foul under- growth, weedy swamps breathing out death, hideous and bloated trees of poison, themselves already poi- soned by their earth, heat unendurable, insufferable, intolerable, unbearable (as the Daily Telegraph said at the time of the Dreyfus case), heat cont…
1929 · PDF PAGE 8
…ffair at Oxfordor the incident of the Edgware Roador the matter of Esme Holland. He determined to be more than ever on his guard. You will understand with what joy, continued Duguesclin, innocent or careless of the sinister thoughts which occupied his companion, I received and an- swered this unmistakable token of friendship. That day no further opportunity of intercourse occurred, but I nar- rowly watched him on the morrow, and saw that he was
1929 · PDF PAGE 22
…ctively. He felt for his heart and failed to find it, wondered if it had stopped and he were dying, had a fit of fear paralysing all his will. He thought of himself lying dead. No, by God! I can't do it! he cried, and flung the pistol back into the drawer. As luck would have it, the weapon exploded. The bullet broke his jaw, tore away four molars, smashed the cheek-bone, pulped the right eye, and, glancing from the frontal bone, found its billet in the ceiling. He lost consciousness and fell. His head struck the grate where yet smouldered the…