CHAPTER VI

THE ANALYST

Two days after the episode related in the last chapter, a fiacre might have been seen rolling along the embankment of the Seine in the direction of Notre Dame.

It had been raining all day, and streams of water descended through the long pipes from the roofs of the houses to form miniature cascades which flowed with a gurgling noise down the gratings placed at intervals along the edge of the kerbstone. The cochers with their varnished top hats might be seen from time to time shaking off the water which poured from the brims in little streams down their overcoats. Everything seemed sodden with rain. Women leading little children by the hand, who were crying on account of the rain, which streamed from the parental umbrellas down their necks, might be observed hurrying along the street, or disappearing into narrow passages apparently leading to nowhere. The second-hand bookstalls along the river had long since been shut up, or covered with tarpaulins to keep off the wet. Here and there a few truant fowls, or a half-starved cat would scuttle out of the way of the carriage as it splashed along. The driver cracked his long whip in a temper, as if attempting to chastise the elements for their bad behaviour. On the carriage went, past groups of workmen in their blue blouses, who could be seen through the window of the fiacre standing in front of the musty smelling bars drinking their absinthe or vin ordinaire, while in the larger cafés others, better dressed, were whiling away their time playing dominoes, or indulging in a game of billiards with absurdly large balls on very small tables.

Suddenly the fiacre turned across the Pont Neuf towards the Rue de l'Ecole de Medicine. The solitary passenger poked his head out of the window.

"Cocher, drive to the third house on the right round the corner," said the fare, and the head instantly disappeared inside the vehicle, which a few minutes later drew up at the house.

It was Pierre Duval who alighted from the cab, and entering the house knocked at the door on the first floor.

"Ah, this is indeed a surprise, mon ami." The speaker, Paul Romaine, was a man nearly middle-aged with a crop of dishevelled hair and teeth discoloured from the effects of perpetual cigarette smoking, but a charming fellow notwithstanding, and thoroughly straightforward and honest.

"Diable! I have not seen you for nearly two years. What brings you in here, mon ami, on a filthy day like this of all others?"

"As a matter of fact I have a most important legal case on hand, and I really came, mon cher Paul, to ask your advice."

"Nothing could give me greater pleasure, I assure you, but I am no lawyer, and I cannot see how I can help you."

"On the contrary you can be of inestimable service to me. You are assistant medical analyst to the Government, are you not?"

"That is precisely what I am," replied Paul, "entirely at your service."

"You must know then that I am acting as prosecutor in a medico-legal case, which is very obscure, as we suspect foul play--in fact poisoning, and it is naturally of the greatest importance that I should make myself au fait with the various poisons and their means of detection. The case I have to study is a very complicated one as none of the doctors could fix on any poisons from the symptoms, and yet the autopsy revealed nothing to account for the death of the victim. Of course my visit is strictly confidential, as it would not do for anyone to know I had been consulting you. I feel sure you will appreciate my reason for this."

"Oh, you may rely on me implicitly. I shall be as silent as the grave. I think the best thing to do would be to take you over to my laboratory and show you how we make these analyses and detect the various poisons. But first you must have a glass of wine," said Paul as he brought a decanter from the cupboard. "These poisoning cases are wonderfully fascinating," he added, as he filled a couple of glasses with remarkably fine Beaune. "To feel that a man's life depends on the colour of a precipitate in a test tube, or on the appearance of a few crystals under the microscope, surrounds one's work with a halo of romance which nothing else I know of can give."

"Yes, that is quite true, but we also have our feelings of excitement and pride. I remember on one occasion I had to defend a man who had been accused of stealing a gold watch, and he confessed to me that he had done it. Well, I succeeded in intercepting the principal witness for the prosecution through an intermediary, and told him to inform the witness that he would not be wanted. I even succeeded in sending him a hundred miles into the country with instructions not to return for a few weeks. The trial came on the same afternoon, and the prosecuting counsel began to state his case. When he had concluded his speech, he informed the judge that he would now proceed to call the witness, and the usher shouted his name high and low. Oh, it was a joke I assure you to watch the counsel's face when the fellow failed to appear. Ha! Ha! Of course the case broke down through the absence of the witness's evidence. But the best of the joke was when the fellow came to see me about paying my fee. I discovered that he had no money, and so I took the gold watch which he had stolen as payment instead! I never enjoyed a fee so much. Oh, Lord! you should have been there." And Pierre laughed again until his sides ached.

Paul opened his blue eyes in undisguised astonishment at the audacity of the lawyer of treating a criminal act in such a tone of levity.

"Upon my word, if I did not think you were joking, I should refuse to speak to you any more," said Paul in utter disgust.

"Well you know it is only by doing smart things that we are able to enhance our reputation--and after all, we are paid to do it. Moreover in this case," added Pierre, anxious to repair the bad impression he was creating in Paul's mind, "I was really sorry for the fellow as it was his first offence, and his wife came and pleaded so hard to me to get him off."

"Well, I will forgive you this time," said Paul, "but for God's sake don't tell anyone else, or you may get struck off the rolls, or even find yourself in the dock one of these fine days."

"My dear Paul, if one wants to get on in one's profession one must not have too thin a skin; you must make a little allowance for us lawyers."

"Well, for my part, I think it is simply disgusting. You ought to aim at justice being done before everything," replied Paul in a voice of indignation.

"Why, my good fellow, if we advocates were to be paragons of virtue, like Thomas à Kempis, or St. Francis de Sales we should all starve to death."

Paul merely shrugged his shoulders.

"Well," he said at length, anxious to change a subject so repugnant to his feelings, "let us go over to the laboratory, and I will show you some of our work." So saying they left the flat together. They entered a large room reeking with chemical fumes. On one table were scales which could weigh a hundred kilos, and on another table a balance so delicate, that it would turn with the fifth of a millegramme.

Rows upon rows of bottles were on the shelves containing twice as many drugs as are to be found in a chemist's shop.

In another part of the room were glass jars filled with every organ of the human body, all furnished with large labels. Beakers, test-tubes, mortars, funnels, measuring-glasses, dishes, thermometers, etc., were scattered all over the room, in what might be termed orderly confusion, but actually just where they were most wanted. On the opposite side of the room stood a large spectroscope by Hilger, used for revealing the spectrum lines of metals, or examining the absorption bands of blood. Near by stood a row of microscopes by Hartnack, furnished with objectives of every power, which were screwed on a revolving attachment so that they could be brought into position by a single turn of the hand.

Pierre was lost in amazement at the prodigious display of apparatus.

"Do you mean to say that you employ all these things?" he asked.

"Oh, my dear sir, you have not seen a fourth part of our apparatus yet. Just look behind the curtain."

Pierre pushed aside a thick curtain, and opening a door found himself in a "dark room" illuminated by a large red light, and supplied with a washing trough and numerous bottles and dishes.

"That is where we make our photographs," said Paul, "and in the room next to it we make our enlargements, and reproduce by photography, finger prints and blood stains, and make copies of the object seen under the microscope."

They passed along a short corridor and entered the bacteriological laboratory. Here were bottles filled with dyes and stains of every colour. A whole row of copper incubating chambers, each surrounded by a water jacket, were ranged along the one side of the wall. Each was heated by an automatic burner, so arranged that a constant temperature of any degree required could be maintained for days or weeks at a time.

In one part of the room was a centrifugal whirler, holding a couple of test-tubes. These were filled with the fluids to be examined which contained solids in suspension, and when these tubes were whirled round at a prodigious rate the solid contents were forced to the bottom of the tubes, and could thus be readily separated. In another part of the room were test-tubes filled with serums, jellies, and meat broths of various kinds, any of which could be inoculated by touching the surface with a sterilized platinum wire which had been previously dipped in the fluid supposed to be infected by microbes. When the microbes were thus placed in their food, the test-tubes containing them would be labelled and placed in the incubator to allow the germs to multiply to their heart's content.

"Once more open the door," said Paul, smiling at his friend's amazement, and the two passed down some steps into a courtyard. All round the walls were hutches filled with guineapigs and rabbits, others contained whole families of rats and mice, some white, and some brown. Other hutches again contained cats and small dogs, while a large cage in the corner was filled with Rhesus and Bonnet monkeys. Lastly in the opposite corner was an aquarium containing a varied assortment of frogs and toads.

"What on earth do you want this menagerie for?" said Pierre.

"Why, this is the most important part of our laboratory. I will show you later what use we make of these animals. Meanwhile let us return to the first room, and we will have a chat."

"Do you always succeed in detecting the poison?" asked Duval.

"In the case of acids, alkalies, and metals or their salts, practically always, as not only are the tests easy to apply and well known, but the doses to be fatal are usually so large that one can find sufficient traces in the stomach, intestines, and liver to make a reliable test. To take an example. Here is a bottle containing what is left of the contents of the stomach of a woman who was poisoned a week ago. We have already made our report, so I can quite well use a little of what is left.

"Watch me closely. I first stir the contents well, and then filter some of it through this filter paper into this little beaker. Now I add a few drops of acid, and then allow some of the sulphuretted hydrogen gas to bubble through. Observe a bright canary yellow precipitate is forming. This shows me that arsenic is probably present. But to make quite sure I apply some further tests." Paul then poured another small quantity of the suspected fluid into a tiny porcelain dish, to which he added a few drops of pure hydrochloric acid and gently warmed it.

"Now," said Paul, "I take this slip of pure polished copper-foil and just dip it into the liquid--so, and see, it is slowly becoming covered with an iron-grey metallic film. In order to be quite sure that the coating is not due to accidental impurity, I repeat the experiment with the contents of another stomach which I know is free from any poison, and observe when I dip the foil in there is no deposit. This shows me that both the acid and the copper-foil are pure, and that in the former case the grey deposit was due to arsenic. In order to make doubly sure, I take the coated slip of copper, wash it well in water, then in ether alcohol, and gently heat it in this reduction tube. Now, let us put it under the microscope and tell me what you see."

"I see a number of shiny square crystals like little diamonds."

"Just so," replied Paul. "Those are the crystals of arsenious acid. It forms characteristic eight-sided crystals. So you see we have determined the presence of arsenic by three independent tests. It therefore must be arsenic, as nothing else will give these reactions. In the case of alkaloids the tests are much more difficult, because one may poison a person with a very small quantity indeed.

"For example, here are the remains of the contents of the stomach of a child. In this particular instance we found it extremely difficult to detect the poison. We tested for all the ordinary poisons in vain. Here our menagerie came to our aid; for on injecting a small quantity of the fluid under a guineapig's skin with this Pravaz syringe the little animal rapidly died with convulsions and syncope. Hence we knew at once that we had to do with a very poisonous alkaloid. By using nearly the whole contents of the stomach, and extracting the alkaloid,[7] we recovered about the 1/30th part of a grain of a white powder which we proved to be Aconitine--one of the most deadly poisons known.

"So you see if anyone tries to poison a person even with these alkaloids he is sure to be found out."

"But are there no poisons which are beyond your powers to detect?"

"Undoubtedly there are," replied Paul, warming up with his subject. "The ptomaines for example. These are soluble ferments which are formed when any animal tissue putrifies. But although we cannot so readily test them by chemical means, we can easily prove their presence by observing their effect on some one or other of the animals in our invaluable menagerie.

"I could give you many more examples if you wanted them. Muscarine, for instance, the alkaloids of certain fungi, many snake poisons, and countless different microbes."

"But can't you tell me of something which will defy detection even by means of your animals?"

Paul puffed away at his cigarette in deep thought, and then, slowly removing it from his lips, looked up at Pierre and gave a characteristic nod.

"Yes, now I think of it, I can give you one. There is a peculiar fluid sent to me from Japan recently," and he pointed to a bottle on the top shelf. "This has hitherto defied all detection by chemical means or otherwise. I alone have discovered how to detect its presence, but I have not had time to publish my discovery, and the poison is quite unknown in Europe. I am told it has the property of sending the person off into a gentle sleep from which he never wakes, if only a teaspoonful be injected under the skin. A friend of mine who is a professor of toxicology at Tokio wrote to me about it, and told me of several murders that had been committed through some mysterious drug which he ultimately managed to get hold of. Being unable to analyse it he sent me a sample to see what I could do with it. It arrived only about two weeks ago."

"Well," said Duval, rising to go, "thanks very much for the charming hour I have spent with you."

"Don't mention it. I see it is nearly dinner time; will you have dinner with me? I know of a select restaurant where the viands and wines are admirable."

Pierre cordially thanked him, and taking up his hat and stick proceeded to follow him out of the room. Before doing so, however, he allowed his cigarette case to fall noiselessly on a duster which lay partly hidden by the table. On leaving the room, Paul turned round and locked the door, and the two left the house together.

"Allow me to offer you one of my cigarettes," said Pierre, as they stood in the portico waiting for a fiacre.

"With pleasure, mon ami."

"Diable!" exclaimed Pierre, fumbling in vain for his cigarette case. "What have I done with it? Oh, I remember, I left it in your laboratory. Pray don't trouble to go back," he added, as Paul turned round to enter the house. "Give me the keys, I can find it much quicker than you can, as I know exactly where I left it in the laboratory. I will be back in a moment."

Suspecting nothing, Paul handed him his bunch of keys, and Pierre ran upstairs. He entered the room, shutting the door after him, and then, rapidly placing a pair of steps against the shelves he took down the bottle which Paul had pointed out. Quick as lightning he poured half the contents into an empty bottle which happened to be lying on the table, and returned the rest to its place on the shelf. Picking up his cigarette case, together with the syringe which Paul had shown him, he slipped them into his pocket, locked the door after him, and ran down to his friend.

"I must apologise for keeping you so long," said Pierre with superb effrontery, "but I could not find it at first as it had dropped on to the floor, but here it is," and so saying he offered him a cigarette.

The fiacre coming up at this moment they adjourned to the "Restaurant Joseph" for dinner.

Of all the restaurants in Paris there is none that quite comes up to "Joseph's." Monsieur Joseph was more than a great chef, he was a genius. To his way of thinking there was no art or science in the world that could compare with his. "What poetry could be mentioned in the same breath with a great dinner," he would exclaim. "And as to science, we know that Newton, Leibnitz, Fresnel, Laplace, Pasteur, and the rest of them achieved great things, but compared with the victories of Béchamel, Robert, Rechaud, Carême, and Mérillion, they are rien, monsieur, rien du tout. You boast to me of the moral courage of the Christian martyrs who faced death in the arena of the Coliseum rather than offer incense to Cæsar; but their courage cannot be mentioned in the same breath with that of Vatel, the cook of the great Condé. Did any of them bid adieu to life in the superb manner of Vatel? Ah! there was a hero for you. He actually put an end to himself because a fish he had ordered arrived too late for his master's banquet. What a magnificent example to set! How sublime his end!"

The great man wiped the perspiration off his brow and positively panted with excitement.

The enthusiasm that the famous chef threw into his work was the wonder and admiration of all the leading gourmands of the town. The moment one of his favourite customers entered for dinner, the great chef would wave away the garçon who came up to take orders of his customer, and attend to him himself.

"Now I cannot allow you to choose your own dinner, permit me to suggest for the Hors d'Oeuvres some salade d'Anchovis with Hareng Marines and just a suspicion of Kets Cavier at the side."

"Yes, that is excellent."

"Now for soup. What do you say to crême d'orge à l'allemande? Oh, you prefer 'clear.' Just a little Consommé Julienne en Tasse, as we must not spoil the appetite for the fish and entrées. A small glass of gin a l'anglaise with it is wonderfully appetising and forms a superb apéritif."

"Quite so."

"And for fish, ah, le voilà. Grey Mullets Meunière, or do you prefer Escalopes de Mostele écossaise just brought in fresh this morning, with a little dry hock? And after that what shall we suggest? Ah! I know, my superb dish, a 'Caneton à la presse.' But gently, gently, messieurs, you cannot pass over my Poussins Picadilly, and to please the palate a demi-bouteille of my special '84 Beaune, it is superb, it will clear the brain." And so the worthy man would go on.

To watch him carve a 'Caneton roti a l'anglaise' was a marvel of dexterity and skill, and was considered one of the sights of Paris. It was a masterpiece of carving. Transfixing the bird by means of a large fork, with half-a-dozen rapid strokes of the knife, never exceeding one stroke for each limb, slish slash, slish slash, and the bird would apparently fall to pieces completely dismembered. "Ah!" he would exclaim, "no chef in England or Germany can perform a feat like that. There is one God and one Joseph, and the latter is the king of chefs, n'est-ce pas?" and smiling in conscious triumph he would place the disarticulated fowl before his astonished guests. "Ah, where would Paris be without its restaurants, and where would the restaurants be without their chefs?"

"Where indeed," replied Pierre and Paul in one breath, as they gazed in astonishment at the great man in his white cap jauntily placed on his head, as he stood before them with his arms folded, awaiting the applause which he knew was sure to follow.

"Yes," replied Joseph, "if only the Emperor Napoleon III. had permitted me to cook for him, how different would have been the result. He would have led his brave army straight to Berlin. Victory would have followed victory."

"And then?" asked Paul amused.

"Why, monsieur, of course we should have dictated terms at Berlin, instead of being massacred by the hated Prussians at Sedan."

"But never mind, a time will come--a time will come--les Bosches nous les aurons, mon Dieu! Nous avons plus que quinze centmille braves--brave comme des lions--Diable!

"But messieurs, they are not eating, and they are positively allowing the Mousselmes de Volaille a l'Indienne to get cold," and the great man nearly wept in despair.

"Mille tonnerres!" he would exclaim, "Les messieurs have eaten their pudding glacé amilcar without blending the flavour with my special brand of Veuve Clicot. Mais c'est terrible!" and he ran off to order the sommelier to fetch the bottle. "And now," he said, "I will call the garçon to fetch you each a cup of my extra special coffee. Such coffee, messieurs, you will not obtain in any other house in Paris. I have spent years in experimenting with the different varieties of coffee beans to discover the most perfect blend."

"Can you give us the recipe?" enquired Pierre and Paul together.

"Oh, messieurs, you would surely not rob a man of the fruit of his labours; but I can tell you this much--there are six varieties of the coffee berries in it, and the discovery and correct blending of these different beans is the outcome of a lifetime of study. The moment I become convinced that any chef produces a superior coffee to mine, I shall put an end to myself, for I shall be too mortified to survive the disgrace."

It was past midnight when our two friends left the restaurant. They strolled for some distance along the boulevards watching the merry crowds of midnight revellers who seem never to be tired of chatting together. Some might be seen in groups round the marble tables under the awnings of the cafés facing the pavement, while others again could be seen inside the heated rooms listening to the strains of some Hungarian band playing their weird Czardas.

Here and there a group of shop girls might be seen hurrying home with rapid footsteps, or dawdling in front of the shop windows, while the ceaseless flow of vehicles and passengers gave the stranger the idea that Paris never went to bed at all.

It was during the early hours of the morning when Paul and Pierre entered their respective apartments.

They were thoroughly tired out, and tried to sleep, but the roar of the great city, like the roar of the ever-sounding sea, continued to break on their ears without a pause.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 7: An alkaloid is an organic crystalline substance containing nitrogen usually of vegetable origin. It is generally poisonous, and in most cases yields brilliant colours with certain reagents. (Author.)]