There he paused, and, divested himself of his shoes, after which, with a slow, stealthy movement, he began ascending the stairs to the chamber in which reposed, in innocence and peace, the unconscious Ada.
Suddenly he paused, and staggered against the wall, as a new thought struck his mind.
“The hound! the hound!” he gasped. “I—I had forgotten the dog.”
Here seemed at once an insurmountable obstacle to the execution of his murderous intention, and for several minutes Jacob Gray sat down on the staircase in deep thought, while his face was distorted by contending passions of hate—fear—and rage.
“Curses—curses on the dog!” he muttered, as he ground his teeth together and clenched his hands in impotent malice. “To be foiled by a half-starved hound! I, Jacob Gray, with my life hanging as it were by a single thread, to be prevented from taking the secret means of preserving myself by this hateful dog. Curses! Curses! I—I—yes—yes. There is a chance—one chance, the poison that Learmont placed in my hands for the purpose of drugging Britton’s wine cup! That—yes, that may rid me of the dog! I will try. Let me recollect. The animal sleeps by the door, sometimes on the mat on the outside, and sometimes within the chamber. We shall see—we shall see—the poison! Ay, the poison!”
Cautiously he descended the few steps he had gained, and going to a drawer in the table, which he had the key of, and which stood close to the blazing fire, in the room he had so recently left, he took from it the phial of poison which he, Learmont, had given to him. After a moment’s thought, he repaired to the cupboard, and taking from it the remains of some meat, upon which he had dined, he poured at least one-half the contents of the small bottle of poison over it.
“This deadly liquid,” he said, “has a grateful smell. If I can induce the hound to fasten on this meat, his death is certain and quick, for Learmont is not a man to do this by halves. Poison from him I should assume to be deadly indeed! Ay, deadly indeed!”
Jacob Gray’s hatred for the dog seemed to have got in some degree over his extreme nervousness, and it was with a firmer step now than he could command before, that he cautiously again ascended the narrow staircase conducting to Ada’s chamber.
Still, however, in his heart, he quailed at the murder—the deliberate, cold-blooded murder of that innocent and beautiful girl, and he presented the ghastly appearance of a resuscitated corpse, rather than a human being who had not passed the portals of the grave. The feeling of honourable humanity was a stranger to the bosom of Jacob Gray. He did not shrink from the murder of the poor and persecuted Ada, because it was a murder—no, it was because he, Jacob Gray, had to do it, unaided and un-cheered in the unholy deed, by aught save his own shivering and alarmed imagination. Jacob Gray had no compunction for the deed; his only terror arose from the fact that he could not shift its consummation on to some one else’s shoulders.
He would gladly have held a light to guide the dagger of another assassin, but he did shrink from the personal danger and the personal consequences of doing it himself. He was one of those who would watch the door while the murder was doing—hold a vessel to catch the blood—anything but do the deed himself.