“Do you see that bottle,” he said—“that plump, round, comfortable-looking bottle? Never mind the name of what is beside it; let us stick to the bottle, and distinguish it, if you like, by giving it a name of our own. Suppose we call it ‘our Stout Friend’? Very good. Our Stout Friend, by himself, is a most harmless and useful medicine. He is freely dispensed every day to tens of thousands of patients all over the civilized world. He has made no romantic appearances in courts of law; he has excited no breathless interest in novels; he has played no terrifying part on the stage. There he is, an innocent, inoffensive creature, who troubles nobody with the responsibility of locking him up! But bring him into contact with something else—introduce him to the acquaintance of a certain common mineral substance, of a universally accessible kind, broken into fragments; provide yourself with (say) six doses of our Stout Friend, and pour those doses consecutively on the fragments I have mentioned, at intervals of not less than five minutes. Quantities of little bubbles will rise at every pouring; collect the gas in those bubbles, and convey it into a closed chamber—and let Samson himself be in that closed chamber; our stout Friend will kill him in half an hour! Will kill him slowly, without his seeing anything, without his smelling anything, without his feeling anything but sleepiness. Will kill him, and tell the whole College of Surgeons nothing, if they examine him after death, but that he died of apoplexy or congestion of the lungs! What do you think of that, my dear lady, in the way of mystery and romance? Is our harmless Stout Friend as interesting now as if he rejoiced in the terrible popular fame of the Arsenic and the Strychnine which I keep locked up there? Don’t suppose I am exaggerating! Don’t suppose I’m inventing a story to put you off with, as the children say. Ask Benjamin there,” said the doctor, appealing to his assistant, with his eyes fixed on Miss Gwilt. “Ask Benjamin,” he repeated, with the steadiest emphasis on the next words, “if six doses from that bottle, at intervals of five minutes each, would not, under the conditions I have stated, produce the results I have described?”
The Resident Dispenser, modestly admiring Miss Gwilt at a distance, started and colored up. He was plainly gratified by the little attention which had included him in the conversation.
“The doctor is quite right, ma’am,” he said, addressing Miss Gwilt, with his best bow; “the production of the gas, extended over half an hour, would be quite gradual enough. And,” added the Dispenser, silently appealing to his employer to let him exhibit a little chemical knowledge on his own account, “the volume of the gas would be sufficient at the end of the time—if I am not mistaken, sir?—to be fatal to any person entering the room in less than five minutes.”
“Unquestionably, Benjamin,” rejoined the doctor. “But I think we have had enough of chemistry for the present,” he added, turning to Miss Gwilt. “With every desire, my dear lady, to gratify every passing wish you may form, I venture to propose trying a more cheerful subject. Suppose we leave the Dispensary, before it suggests any more inquiries to that active mind of yours? No? You want to see an experiment? You want to see how the little bubbles are made? Well, well! there is no harm in that. We will let Mrs. Armadale see the bubbles,” continued the doctor, in the tone of a parent humoring a spoiled child. “Try if you can find a few of those fragments that we want, Benjamin. I dare say the workmen (slovenly fellows!) have left something of the sort about the house or the grounds.”
The Resident Dispenser left the room.
As soon as his back was turned, the doctor began opening and shutting drawers in various parts of the Dispensary, with the air of a man who wants something in a hurry, and does not know where to find it. “Bless my soul!” he exclaimed, suddenly stopping at the drawer from which he had taken his cards of invitation on the previous day, “what’s this? A key? A duplicate key, as I’m alive, of my fumigating apparatus upstairs! Oh dear, dear, how careless I get,” said the doctor, turning round briskly to Miss Gwilt. “I hadn’t the least idea that I possessed this second key. I should never have missed it. I do assure you I should never have missed it if anybody had taken it out of the drawer!” He bustled away to the other end of the room—without closing the drawer, and without taking away the duplicate key.
In silence, Miss Gwilt listened till he had done. In silence, she glided to the drawer. In silence, she took the key and hid it in her apron pocket.
The Dispenser came back, with the fragments required of him, collected in a basin. “Thank you, Benjamin,” said the doctor. “Kindly cover them with water, while I get the bottle down.”
As accidents sometimes happen in the most perfectly regulated families, so clumsiness sometimes possesses itself of the most perfectly disciplined hands. In the process of its transfer from the shelf to the doctor, the bottle slipped and fell smashed to pieces on the floor.
“Oh, my fingers and thumbs!” cried the doctor, with an air of comic vexation, “what in the world do you mean by playing me such a wicked trick as that? Well, well, well—it can’t be helped. Have we got any more of it, Benjamin?”