The Lost Heir

by G. A. Henty

"Yes; he said to me the other day quite angrily, 'I don't want to be treated as a child or a helpless invalid, doctor. I took a mile walk yesterday. I am beginning to feel quite myself again; it will do me a world of good to be back in London, and to drive down to the club and to have a chat with my old friends again.'"

"Well, I think it best that he should not be thwarted. You have looked at the scars from time to time, I suppose?"

"Yes; there has been no change in them, they are very red, but he tells me—and what is more to the point, his man tells me—that they have always been so."

"What do you think, Leeds? Will he ever be himself again? Watching the case from day to day as you have done, your opinion is worth a good deal more than mine."

"I have not the slightest hope of it," the young doctor replied quietly. "I have seen as complete wrecks as he is gradually pull themselves round again, but they have been cases where they have been the victims of drink or of some malady from which they had been restored by a successful operation. In his case we have failed altogether to determine the cause of his attack, or the nature of it. We have been feeling in the dark, and hitherto have failed to discover a clew that we could follow up. So far there has been no recurrence of his first seizure, but, with returning strength and returning brain work, it is in my opinion more than likely that we shall have another recurrence of it. The shock has been a tremendous one to the system. Were he a younger man he might have rallied from it, but I doubt whether at his age he will ever get over it. Actually he is, I believe, under seventy; physically and mentally, he is ninety."

"That is so, and between ourselves I cannot but think that a long continuance of his life is not to be desired. I believe with you that he will be a confirmed invalid, requiring nursing and humoring like a child, and for the sake of Miss Covington and all around him one cannot wish that his life should be prolonged."

"I trust that, when the end comes, Dr. Pearson, it will be gradual and painless, and that there will be no recurrence of that dreadful seizure."

"I hope so indeed. I have seen many men in bad fits, but I never saw anything to equal that. I can assure you that several of the men who were present—men who had gone through a dozen battles—were completely prostrated by it. At least half a dozen of them, men whom I had never attended before, knowing that I had been present, called upon me within the next two or three days for advice, and were so evidently completely unstrung that I ordered them an entire change of scene at once, and recommended them to go to Homburg, take the waters, and play at the tables; to do anything, in fact, that would distract their minds from dwelling upon the painful scene that they had witnessed. Had it not been for that, one would have had no hesitation in assigning his illness to some obscure form of paralysis; as it is, it is unaccountable. Except," he added, with a smile, "by your theory of poison."

The younger doctor did not smile in return. "It is the only cause that I can assign for it," he said gravely. "The more I study the case, the more I investigate the writings of medical men in India and on the East and West Coast of Africa, the more it seems to me that the attack was the work of a drug altogether unknown to European science, but known to Obi women, fetich men, and others of that class in Africa. In some of the accounts of people accused of crime by fetich men, and given liquor to drink, which they are told will not affect them if innocent, but will kill them if guilty, I find reports of their being seized with instant and violent convulsions similar to those that you witnessed. These convulsions often end in death; sometimes, where, I suppose, the dose was larger than usual, the man drops dead in his tracks while drinking it. Sometimes he dies in convulsions; at other times he recovers partially and lingers on, a mere wreck, for some months. In other cases, where, I suppose, the dose was a light one, and the man's relatives were ready to pay the fetich man handsomely, the recovery was speedy and complete; that is to say, if, as is usually the case, the man was not put to death at once upon the supposed proof of his guilt. By what possible means such poison could have found its way to England, for there is no instance of its nature being divulged to Europeans, I know not, nor how it could have been administered; but I own that it is still the only theory by which I can account for the General's state. I need not say that I should never think of giving the slightest hint to anyone but yourself as to my opinion in the matter, and trust most sincerely that I am mistaken; but although I have tried my utmost I cannot overcome the conviction that the theory is a correct one, and I think, Dr. Pearson, that if you were to look into the accounts of the various ways in which the poisons are sold by old negro women to those anxious to get rid of enemies or persons whose existence is inconvenient to them, and by the fetich men in these ordeals, you will admit at least that had you been practicing on the West Coast, and any white man there had such an attack as that through which the General has passed, you would without hesitation have put it down to poison by some negro who had a grudge against him."

"No doubt, no doubt," the other doctor admitted; "but, you see, we are not on the West Coast. These poisons are, as you admit, absolutely unobtainable by white men from the men and women who prepare them. If obtainable, when would they have been brought here, and by whom? And lastly, by whom administered, and from what motive? I admit all that you say about the African poisons. I lately had a long talk about them with a medical man who had been on the coast for four or five years, but until these other questions can be answered I must refuse to believe that this similarity is more than accidental, and in any possible way due to the same cause."