that the least grain meant instant death. After the lecture I took some poison. I worked this alkaloid into small, soluble pills, and each pill I put in a box with a similar pill made without the poison.
I was thinking like that. When I have my chance, my gentlemen each have a pill of these boxes, while I will eat the pill that remains. That will be our deadly game. So from that day I had always my pill boxes about with me.
It was near twelve, and a wild, bleak night. I lit a cigar, my hands were trembling. As I drove, I saw old John Ferrier and sweet Lucy in the darkness. I pulled up at the house in the Brixton Road.
There was nobody. When I looked in at the window, Drebber was sleeping. I shook him by the arm, ‘It’s time to get out,’ I said.
‘All right,’ said he.
I suppose he thought we were near the hotel. He got out without a word, and followed me down the garden. When we came to the door, I opened it, and led him into the front room. The father and the daughter were walking in front of us.
‘It’s infernally dark,’ said he.
‘We’ll soon have a light,’ I said. I took a wax candle. ‘Now, Enoch Drebber,’ I continued, ‘who am I?’
He gazed at me with drunken eyes for a moment, and then I saw a horror in them. He knew me. He staggered back with a livid face, and I saw the perspiration upon his brow. His teeth chattered. I laughed loud and long.
‘You dog!’ I said; ‘I hunted you everywhere, and you always escaped me. Now I got you.’
I saw on his face that he thought I was mad. So I was for the time.
‘Do you remember Lucy Ferrier?’ I cried. I locked the door and shook the key in his face. ‘Punishment is coming.’
His coward lips trembled as I spoke.
‘Will you murder me?’ he stammered.
‘There is no murder,’ I answered. ‘Is it a murder to kill a mad dog? Do you remember my poor darling? You dragged her from her father, and bore her away to your accursed and shameless harem.’
‘It was not I who killed her father,’ he cried.
‘But it was you who broke her innocent heart,’ I shrieked. I gave him the box. ‘Let the God judge between us. Choose and eat. There is death in one and life in the other. I shall take what you leave. Let us see if there is justice upon the earth.’
He prayed for mercy, but I drew my knife and held it to his throat. And he obeyed me. He ate the pill. Then I swallowed the other. Who will live and who will die? The first warning pangs told him that the poison was in him. I laughed as I saw it, and held Lucy’s marriage ring in front of his eyes. The action of the alkaloid is rapid. A spasm of pain; he threw his hands out in front of him, staggered, and then, with a hoarse cry, fell heavily upon the floor. I placed my hand upon his heart. There was no movement. He was dead!
The blood was streaming from my nose. And I wrote upon the wall with it. Perhaps it was some mischievous idea. One day a German was found in New York with RACHE written up above him. The newspapers were writing about the secret societies. What puzzled the New Yorkers will puzzle the Londoners. So I dipped my finger in my own blood and writhe the German word on the wall.
Then I walked down to my cab. I drove some distance. Then I put my hand into the pocket in which I usually kept Lucy’s ring, and found that it was not there. It was the only memento that I had of her! I dropped it when I stooped over Drebber’s body. So I drove back, and left my cab in a side street. I went boldly up to the house. When I arrived there, I walked right into the arms of a police-officer. I pretended to be hopelessly drunk.
That was how Enoch Drebber came to his end. But Stangerson was still alive. I knew that he was staying at Halliday’s Private Hotel, and I waited there all day, but he never came out. I’m sure that that he suspected something. He was cunning, that Stangerson.
I soon found out which was the window of his bedroom, and early next morning I took a ladder which was lying in the lane behind the hotel. I woke him up. I described Drebber’s death to him, and I gave him the same choice of the poisoned pills. But he sprang from his bed and flew at my throat. I stabbed him to the heart.
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