Still I will throw away no chance in favor of the being who has occupied so much of my last thoughts. Call here to-morrow—at any hour you please—and say that you have called to see me, according to my appointment, and produce and show the enclosed ordinary invitation, to any one who may inquire, as being the only communication which you have received from me since my return from Brighton. Bear all this in mind, by the value you set upon my friendship: whatever you may then see or hear, be firm and prudent.—O. G."
"Wednesday."
In this letter he enclosed the long letter and the note already mentioned; and having sealed and directed the whole, with elaborate distinctness, he threw his cloak round him, and went with his packet to the post-office, and with his own hand, after an instant's hesitation, dropped it into the box, and returned to his chambers.
Then he took another sheet of paper, and wrote thus:
"Dear Viper,—I doubt whether, after all, there will be a Dissolution; but, at any rate, I will perform my promise, and be ready with what you wish for Sunday week.—Yours ever,
"O. G.
"P. S.—I shall call upon you on Saturday, without fail."
This he folded up and directed, and proceeded to commence the following:—
"Thavies' Inn, Wednesday.
"Dear Sir,—I have finally determined to make every sacrifice in order to extricate myself, with honor, from my present embarrassments. You will, therefore, as soon as you get this, please to sell out all my"——
Here he laid down his pen; and Mrs. Brown presently announcing that everything was ready in his dressing-room, he thanked her, and proceeded to shave and dress. He was not more than a quarter of an hour over his toilet. He had put on his usual evening dress—his blue body-coat, black trousers, a plain shirt and black stock, and a white waistcoat—scarcely whiter, however, than the face of him who wore it.
"I am going for the coach now, sir," said Mrs. Brown, knocking at the door.
"If you please," he replied briskly and cheerfully—and the instant that he had heard her close the outer door after her, he opened the secret spring drawer in his desk, and took out a very small glass phial, with a glass stopper, over which was tied some bladder to preserve its contents from the air; then he carefully closed the drawer. His face was ghastly pale; his knees trembled; his hands were cold and damp as those of the dead. He took a strong peppermint lozenge from the mantelpiece, and chewed it, while he removed the stopper from the bottle, which contained about half a dram of the most subtle and potent poison which has been discovered by man—one extinguishing life almost instantaneously, and leaving no trace of its presence except a slight odor, which he had taken the precaution of masking and overpowering with that of the peppermint. He returned to get his hat, which was in his dressing-room; he put it on—and in glancing at the glass, scarcely recognized the ghastly image which it reflected. His chief object was, to complete the deception he intended practising on the Insurance Company, with whom he had effected a policy on his life for £2,000—and also to delude everybody into the notion of his having died suddenly, but naturally. Having stirred up the large red fire, and made a kind of hollow in it, he took out the stopper, and dropped it, with the bladder, which had been tied over it, into the fire. Then he took his pen in his right hand with a fresh dip of ink in it; kneeled down on the fender, close to the fire; faintly whispered "Oh, Emma!" poured the whole of the deadly poison into his mouth, and succeeded in dropping the phial into the very heart of the fire—falling down the next instant on the hearth-rug, oblivious, insensible—dead. However it might have been, that the moment after he had done this direful deed, he would have GIVEN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE, had it been his, to have undone what he had done—he had succeeded, for the present, in effecting his object.
Poor Mrs. Brown's terror, on discovering her master stretched senseless on the floor—his hat pushed partly down over his eyes in the act of falling—may be imagined. Medical assistance was called in, but only to announce that "the vital spark had fled." It was clearly either apoplexy, said the intelligent medical man, or an organic disease of the heart. Of this opinion were the astute coroner and his jury, without hesitation. The deceased had evidently been seized while in the very act of writing to some broker. [Gammon had no more "stock" of any sort, for all he had written that letter, than the cat which had unconsciously witnessed, and been for a moment disturbed by, his death.] Mr. Hartley came, and producing the note which he had received, spoke of the disappointment which they had all felt on account of Mr. Gammon's non-arrival. The other letters—the appointments which he had made for the morrow—the evidence which he had taken care to enable his laundress to give—all these things were decisive—it was really "scarcely a case requiring an inquest;" but as they had been called, they returned a verdict of "Died by the Visitation of God." He was buried, a few days afterwards, in the adjoining churchyard, (St. Andrew's,) where he lies mouldering away quietly enough, certainly; but whether (in the language of the solemn and sublime burial-service which his successful fraud had procured to be read over his remains) "in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ," is another, and a fearful question.