Presently there was a sound of footsteps, and the prisoner heard two people in conversation coming down the corridor. But he did not stir; events of that day had no interest for him: he was to be electrocuted on the morrow. The steps stopped outside his cell, and he heard the attendant saying, “I am sorry, Doctor Van Horne, but I can give you only an hour. Orders are orders, you know.”
The heavy barred door swung open, was closed and locked again, and the turnkey walked away. Jean Lescaut looked up wearily and without curiosity. He saw a tall clerical gentleman regarding him intently.
“Jean Lescaut,” began the stranger, stepping close to the prisoner, “I have come here to-day to offer you the only thing on earth which you care for—liberty.”
A quick flush of color dyed the prison pallor of the man in irons, then as quickly faded again.
“I am going to offer this to you,” the doctor continued, “not because I think you innocent of the crime of which you were convicted, not because I have any friendship for you, or because I desire to defeat justice. The proposition I make you is purely in the interest of science. Have you ever been hypnotized?”
The prisoner shook his head.
“Have you ever seen anyone in such a condition?”
Lescaut nodded wearily. All this talk irritated him. He wished that the man would stop looking at him so intently and questioning him so much. It reminded him of that other day in the court room when the lawyer for the prosecution had looked at him in just such a way, and asked him so many questions that he had become confused and told many things that he had never intended to tell.
“If you have seen it done, so much the better. You have probably seen persons put under this influence and then undergo tests which you know would be a physical impossibility for them to endure otherwise. I have myself given subjects arsenic, telling them it was sugar, and they felt no bad effects. I have also burned with hot irons and thrust pins into the flesh of such persons without their feeling any pain.
“Now what I have to propose to you, Jean Lescaut, is this,—to-morrow at noon you are to go to the electric chair where 1800 volts of electricity will be sent through your body. At eleven o’clock to-morrow I will come to your cell and put you into an hypnotic sleep. You will go to the chair, show all the symptoms and effects of a person electrocuted, and you will apparently be dead. In reality, however, you will only be asleep. And, as I can easily obtain your body from the prison doctor on the pretense of using it for dissection purposes, I can then awaken you.”