“As to the price,” said the former, “taking into consideration the urgency, and the special providence, so to speak, in purwiding, at a moment’s notice too, this ’ere comely young——”
A certain full chink of money stopped him.
“Thankee,” he said, after a short negotiation. “I’ll own you’ve done the handsome, sir, and we’ve no cause to complain. Not but what I had to give——”
“Good night!” said the Professor.
Not till they were gone, locked out, and the very trail of their filthy footsteps hidden under the black droppings of the night, did he turn, for all his impatience, and regard the body again.
“Nancy,” he murmured to himself; “yes, it’s Nancy.”
Into the vast study of biology it is perfectly certain that a personal knowledge of biogenesis must enter. Here, too, the individual must be sacrificed to the cause. Well, by virtue of that phase in his career before-mentioned, he had already once made of Nancy a holocaust to science. If the fruits of that sacrifice had been to be found in a ruined life, a social degradation, a gradual decline upon infamy, what was it all to him? As german to the general subject as the dead specimens on his walls was the living specimen of his passion. Ex abusu non arguitur ad usum. Still, it was a strange coincidence that she should come thus to consummate his work.
Looking upon her frozen face, he was aware of certain tell-tale, rudely-erased tokens about the mouth. He never had a doubt as to what they signified. It was a rude kiss that of the pitch-plaster, more close and savage than any he himself had once pressed upon those blistered lips. So, the murderous beasts had gone the short way to supply his urgency! Would they have taken it none the less, he wondered, if they could have known in what relation their victim once stood towards their employer? Very likely. Very justly, too, could they believe him consistent with himself.
Nevertheless, though he had no conscience, though he had too often scored that fact on human flesh with a knife to be in any doubt about it, it was notable that, as he moved now, perfectly cold and collected, to make some selection of tools from the table hard by, he was registering to himself a vow, mortal to some folks, that no effort of his should be lacking to help bring certain vile instruments to their judgment—so soon as his disuse of them should find warrant in a fuller supply of the legitimate material.
As he groped for what he wanted, a sparrow twittered somewhere in the dark outside. He started, and dwelt a moment listening. Birds! the little false priests of haunted woods, who sang their lying benedictions over every folly perpetrated in their green shades! Why, he had loathed them, even while he had been making their loves the text for this early experiment of his in rustic nature. They had been singing when——grasping his knife firmly, he returned to the table.