University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.
Paul's Confession.

ON the afternoon following this
disclosure, the door of my cell
turned on its hinges, and Julius
Kenneth entered.

In his presence I ought to have
trembled; but I was calm and
collected. He, feverish and dangerous.

“You received my note?”

“Yes; and have come here, as you requested.”

I waved him to a chair, which he refused to
take. Stood leaning on the back of it.

“You of course know, Mr. Kenneth, that I
have refused to reveal the circumstances connected

with the death of Mary Ware? I wished to
make the confession to you alone.”

He regarded me for a moment from beneath his
shaggy eyebrows.

“Well?”

“But even to you I will assign no reason for
the course I pursued. It was necessary that Mary
Ware should die.”

“Well?”

“I decided that she should die in her chamber,
and to that end I purloined her night-key.

Julius Kenneth looked through and through me,
as I spoke.

“On Friday night after she had gone to the
theatre, I entered the hall-door by means of the
key, and stole unobserved to her room, where I
secreted myself under the bed, or in that small
clothes-press near the stove — I forget which.
Sometime between eleven and twelve o'clock,
Mary Ware returned. While she was in the act
of lighting the gas, I pressed a handkerchief,
saturated with chloroform, over her mouth. You

know the effect of chloroform? I will, at this
point spare you further detail, merely remarking
that I threw my gloves and the handkerchief in
the stove; but I'm afraid there was not fire
enough to consume them.”

Kenneth walked up and down the cell greatly
agitated; then seated himself on the foot of
the bed

“Curse you!”

“Are you listening to me, Mr. Kenneth?”

“Yes!”

“I extinguished the light, and proceeded to
make my escape from the room, which I did in a
manner so simple that the detectives, through
their desire to ferret out wonderful things will
never discover it, unless, indeed, you betray me.
The night, you will recollect, was foggy; it was
impossible to discern an object at four yards distance
— this was fortunate for me. I raised the
window-sash and let myself out cautiously, holding
on by the sill, until my feet touched on the
moulding which caps the window below. I then

drew down the sash. By standing on the extreme
left of the cornice, I was able to reach the tin
water-spout of the adjacent building, and by that
I descended to the sidewalk.”

The man glowered at me like a tiger, his eyes
green and golden with excitement: I have since
wondered that he did not tear me to pieces.

“On gaining the street,” I continued coolly,
“I found that I had brought the knife with me.
It should have been left in the chamber — it
would have given the whole thing the aspect of
suicide. It was too late to repair the blunder, so
I threw the knife —”

“Into the river!” exclaimed Kenneth, involuntarily.

And then I smiled.

“How did you know it was I!” he shricked.

“Hush! they will overhear you in the corridor.
It was as plain as day. I knew it before I had
been five minutes in the room. First, because
you shrank instinctively from the corpse, though
you seemed to be caressing it. Secondly, when I

looked into the stove, I saw a glove and handkerchief,
partly consumed; and then I instantly accounted
for the faint close smell which had affected
me before the room was ventilated. It was chloroform.
Thirdly, when I went to open the window,
I noticed that the paint was scraped off the
brackets which held the spout to the next house.
This conduit had been newly painted two days
previously — I watched the man at work; the
paint on the brackets was thicker than anywhere
else, and had not dried. On looking at your feet,
which I did critically, while speaking to you, I
saw that the leather on the inner side of each boot
was slightly chafed, paint-marked. It is a way
of mine to put this and that together!”

“If you intend to betray me —”

“O, no, but I don't, or I should not be here —
alone with you. I am, as you may allow, not
quite a fool.”

“Indeed, sir, you are as subtle as —”

“Yes, I would n't mention him.”

“Who?”

“The devil.”

Kenneth mused.

“May I ask, Mr. Lynde, what you intend
to do?”

“Certainly — remain here.”

“I don't understand you,” said Kenneth with
an air of perplexity.

“If you will listen patiently, you shall learn
why I have acknowledged this deed, why I would
bear the penalty. I believe there are vast, intense
sensations from which we are excluded, by the
conventional fear of a certain kind of death.
Now, this pleasure, this ecstacy, this something,
I don't know what, which I have striven for all
my days, is known only to a privileged few —
innocent men, who, through some oversight of the
law, are hanged by the neck! How rich is
Nature in compensations! Some men are born to
be hung, some have hanging thrust upon them,
and some (as I hope to do,) achieve hanging. It
appears ages since I commenced watching for an
opportunity like this. Worlds could not tempt

me to divulge your guilt, nor could worlds have
tempted me to commit your crime, for a man's
conscience should be at ease to enjoy, to the
utmost, this delicious death! Our interview is at
at end, Mr. Kenneth. I held it my duty to say
this much to you.”

And I turned my back on him.

“One word, Mr. Lynde.”

Kenneth came to my side, and laid a heavy
hand on my shoulder, that red right hand, which
all the tears of the angels cannot make white
again.

As he stood there, his face suddenly grew so
familiar to me — yet so vaguely familiar — that I
started. It seemed as if I had seen such a face,
somewhere, in my dreams, hundreds of years ago.
The face in the grate.

“Did you send this to me last month?” asked
Kenneth, holding up a slip of paper on which was
scrawled, Watch them — in my handwriting.

“Yes,” I answered.

Then it struck me that these few thoughtless

words, which some sinister spirit had impelled me
to write, were the indirect cause of the whole
catastrophe.

“Thank you,” he said hurriedly. “I watched
them!” Then, after a pause, “I shall go far
from here. I can not, I will not die yet. Mary
was to have been my wife, so she would have
hidden her shame — O cruel! she, my own
cousin, and we the last two of our race! Life is
not sweet to me, it is bitter, bitter; but I shall live
until I stand front to front with him. And you?
They will not harm you — you are a madman!”

Julius Kenneth was gone before I could reply.
The cell door shut him out forever — shut him
out in the flesh. His spirit was not so easily
exorcised.

After all, it was a wretched fiasce. Two
officious friends of mine, who had played chess
with me, at my lodgings, on the night of the 3rd,
proved an alibi; and I was literally turned out
of the Tombs; for I insisted on being executed.

Then it was maddening to have the newspapers
call me a monomaniac.

I a monomaniac?

What was Pythagoras, Newton, Fulton? Have
not the great original lights of every age, been
regarded as madmen? Science, like religion, has
its martyrs.

Recent surgical discoveries have, I believe, sustained
me in my theory; or, if not, they ought to
have done so. There is said to be a pleasure in
drowning. Why not in strangulation?

In another field of science, I shall probably
have full justice awarded me — I now allude to
the Moon-Apparatus, which is still in an unfinished
state, but progressing.