"I hear!" said Egbert Crawford, for the moment absorbed if not fascinated by the developments of this real or affected superstition; but not carried away, it may be believed, from the influence which this hideous old woman might be able to exert on his own fortunes.
"Mammy—you don't 'member ole Mammy?"—the old woman went on. "Captain Lewis brought Mammy an me from Jamaica more'n fifty years ago. She mus' have died when you was a little picanninny. She was de great Obi woman, de queen of dem all; and she tole me afore she died, so's I could do mos' as much. Many's de lub potion Mammy an me has mixed up, dat has made some ob de wite bosoms fuller afore dey was done workin; and many's de charm—"
"Poh! nonsense! don't say 'charm'; call it 'dose'!" broke in the lawyer, at last impatient. "I believe you can kill, whether you can cure or not, Aunt Synchy; but I am a man, with some experience in the world, and I don't believe in your Obi. All your dead cats and babies' hands and snakes yonder, are just so many tricks to influence the superstitious. I know better, and they don't influence me!"
"Oh, dey doesn't, eh, honey? You is too smart an don't believe in de Obi?" For the moment her face was lowering and threatening—then it changed again to the same wrinkled Sphynx as before. "Nebber mind—you is my boy, an I lubs you, an so you 'sult de ole woman widout de Obi payin' you for it! Call it 'dose,' then, honey—many's de dose dat dese hans have mixed, dat has made de coffin-maker hab somefin to do and sent de property where it belonged."
"I believe you!" was the laconic comment of Egbert Crawford, when the crone, spite of his interruptions, had finished her long rigmarole. What followed may quite as well be imagined as described. Richard Crawford was doomed to be operated upon by one of those insidious and deadly vegetable poisons, outwardly applied, in which none have such horrible skill as the crones of the African race who have derived their knowledge from the West India Islands. Whether it should be brought near the head by concealment in a pillow, or near the more vital portions of the body itself through use of a bandage worn near the skin,—the effect would be the same—insensible debilitation, decline, death! But the latter plan would be much the more rapid; and in neither event, when the deed was done, would there be one mark, perceptible even to the dissecting surgeon, telling that other than natural decay had brought about dissolution.
Ten minutes afterwards, Aunt Synchy was busy compounding a black paste, from various preparations which she found among the vials on the shelf and under one corner of the heap of rags which she called her bed—crooning all the while a dismal attempt at a tune which made even the not-over-sensitive lawyer shudder, and putting the mixture at last into his hands with a "Lor' bress you, honey!" which might have made any one shudder if he had understood the connection. Fifteen minutes later, the Tombs lawyer left Thomas Street, without the information of which he had originally come in search, but his mind now full of other things, and bearing in his mind the mental label of the prescription: "to be used as directed."
So vice buds into crime whenever opportunity offers, and the Hazaels of the world, who have believed that they never could be brought to "do this thing," pursue it with an energy and determination shaming the efforts of older offenders. Yesterday only an illicit lover: to-day the destroyer of children unborn! Yesterday only an ordinary scoundrel: to-day the worst and most deadly of all murderers—the poisoner!
Three months later—to wit, toward the close of June—that state of affairs was existing at the house of Richard Crawford, which has before been indicated. What was it, indeed, that Josephine Harris had dimly discovered?