I found that I had not miscalculated my danger. The man did not appear to have the least idea as to how I was to help him. He only knew that I was in his power, and he used his control to insure that something more potent than friendship should be enlisted in his behalf. As the days went by, his behavior grew to be a frightful thing to witness. He threatened, flattered, implored, offered to double the sum he had promised if I would save him. My really reasonable first thought was to see the governor of the State, and, as Stagers’s former physician, make oath to his having had many attacks of epilepsy followed by brief periods of homicidal mania. He had, in fact, had fits of alcoholic epilepsy. Unluckily, the governor was in a distant city. The time was short, and the case against my man too clear. Stagers said it would not do. I was at my wit’s end. “Got to do something,” said File, “or I’ll attend to your case, doc.”
“But,” said I, “suppose there is really nothing?”
“Well,” said Stagers to me when we were alone, “you get him satisfied, anyhow. He’ll never let them hang him, and perhaps—well, I’m going to give him these pills when I get a chance. He asked to have them. But what’s your other plan?”
Stagers knew as much about medicine as a pig knows about the opera. So I set to work to delude him, first asking if he could secure me, as a clergyman, an hour alone with File just before the execution. He said money would do it, and what was my plan?
“Well,” said I, “there was once a man named Dr. Chovet. He lived in London. A gentleman who turned highwayman was to be hanged. You see,” said I, “this was about 1760. Well, his friends bribed the jailer and the hangman. The doctor cut a hole in the man’s windpipe, very low down where it could be partly hid by a loose cravat. So, as they hanged him only a little while, and the breath went in and out of the opening below the noose, he was only just insensible when his friends got him—”
“And he got well,” cried Stagers, much pleased with my rather melodramatic tale.
“Yes,” I said, “he got well, and lived to take purses, all dressed in white. People had known him well, and when he robbed his great-aunt, who was not in the secret, she swore she had seen his ghost.”
Stagers said that was a fine story; guessed it would work; small town, new business, lots of money to use. In fact, the attempt thus to save a man is said to have been made, but, by ill luck, the man did not recover. It answered my purpose, but how any one, even such an ass as this fellow, could believe it could succeed puzzles me to this day.
File became enthusiastic over my scheme, and I cordially assisted his credulity. The thing was to keep the wretch quiet until the business blew up or—and I shuddered—until File, in despair, took his pill. I should in any case find it wise to leave in haste.
My friend Stagers had some absurd misgivings lest Mr. File’s neck might be broken by the fall; but as to this I was able to reassure him upon the best scientific authority. There were certain other and minor questions, as to the effect of sudden, nearly complete arrest of the supply of blood to the brain; but with these physiological refinements I thought it needlessly cruel to distract a man in File’s peculiar position. Perhaps I shall be doing injustice to my own intellect if I do not hasten to state again that I had not the remotest belief in the efficacy of my plan for any purpose except to get me out of a very uncomfortable position and give me, with time, a chance to escape.