"M. Leblanc?" Leon laughed drunkenly as he turned to hang up his hat. "I do not fear Monsieur Leblanc. He is like you, mon ami; he is an owl; he sees nothing. Besides, he is away now. He has gone to the country for a few days. He would buy a farm; he would put my Fanchette on a farm! Pécaire! But while he is gone Fanchette and I are happy. She has hired a waitress to take her place — a lean waitress with brick-colored hair. Fanchette acts as manager. I am her assistant. Hah! It is amusing. But is it not an ideal arrangement?"
My silence seemed to anger him. As he watched me his leer changed to a glare, and finally he burst out:
"But why do you tell me to be careful? You have corrected me again! How is it your affair? I will mind my own business and you shall mind yours… You disgust me!.."
But he was in a better humor the next morning, and when I came into the study room I found him staring rapturously into the glass jar on the mantel.
"Come, mon ami," he exclaimed, "and admire with me the consummate skill with which I removed this organ. Ah, was it not an artistic job? A wonderful specimen, mon Henri; just what I need for study. I will be a great surgeon, n'est ce pas?… You should have specialized in the heart, Henri. The old lungs that you study are of no use except for breathing, like bellows such as blacksmiths use. But the heart — ah, it is the organ magnifique! It is the heart that sends out blood that is like the richest of wine. It is the heart that puts the glow to my Fanchette's cheeks. It is the heart that gives us happiness, emotion, love. A wonderful thing, Henri — wonderful!.."
I failed miserably in my examinations that day, but from the triumphant expression on Leon's face when I met him early in the evening I knew that he had succeeded as completely as I had failed. The situation was galling to me: I had worked slavishly, he had trifled and loafed; yet I had lost and he had won.
After a hasty dinner at my pension I hurried to my room. As usual, Leon was gone. Partly because of a crushing headache and wracked nerves and partly because of a desire to be entirely alone in enduring the day's disappointments, I went to bed. But I did not sleep — I tossed and rolled; I thought, suffered, despaired.
Finally I got up, jerked one of Leon's richly-hued robes about me and went into the study room. It was eleven o'clock.
The night was black — a desolation of disturbing quietude. The wind and rain of the night before had gone. Not a whisper, not a sound of any kind came to break the silence of the room — it was like a void, a vacuity, of the portentous stillness.
Suddenly, yet inexorably, I was gripped by that same subconscious force that had come to me the night before. It raised my head from my propping hands. It turned me in my chair. It focused my eyes on the tall glass jar that sat on the mantel.
Surely, regularly, its every motion accentuated against the pure white background of wall, the heart was beating, beating.
A sudden anger rose within me.
"I am going mad!" I thought desperately. I would seize the jar and its devilish contents; I would smash it, hurl it from the window. But to carry out my resolution I could not summon the strength of a single muscle. I was helpless.
As I watched, the reddish-brown lump began to swim about the jar. Its beating was measured, like a funeral tramp. I could hear it, its splashing sound thudding mightily in the deep stillness.
Suddenly there came a tremendous splash. The heart dived to the bottom, floundered for a moment, then again shot to the top. Its motion was so rapid that my eyes could scarcely follow it. It churned the liquid. It dashed and darted about, mad~ly, frantically. It thrashed about in the alcohol like a wounded shark in the agony of death.
"The thing has a soul," I thought; "and it is troubled, disturbed."
The jar rocked, almost overturned, from the violent movement within. The heart veered, dodged, banged upward, then shot down. Yes, the thing must have a soul.
I tried to take my eyes away — fruitless effort! The thing was possessing me, was my master. It bade me watch, and I did. But as I watched I think I must have prayed.
I tried to reach for my syringe; but my hand hung motionless at my side. I was powerless.
A quick thought almost calmed me.
"I will see now—" I told myself— "I will see whether it is my nerves, whether I am going mad. I will fight it without the morphine. I will fight it, and if it ceases moving, I will have won."
My situation was no longer terrifying; it became a game, a battle. I was fighting, playing against the reddish-brown streak that thrashed continuously against its background of white; I was fighting its monotonous beats, its zigzagging progress, its splashing sounds, the agitated wavelets it made.
A mellow-toned clock boomed faintly in the distance. I counted its strokes — one — two — three—
The heart shot to the middle of the jar — for a moment became wholly rigid. Then its beating slowed. I stared, listened. Yes, its beats were timed exactly with each stroke of the clock. They came slowly, relentlessly, like a knell. I kept on counting.
— Eight — nine — ten — eleven — twelve.
At the last stroke the heart again became rigid. Then it sank slowly to the bottom of the jar and lay there motionless.
"I have won!" I told myself fiercely, exultingly. "I have beaten it! It was my nerves, but I have conquered them."
Surely a sedative could do no harm now, I thought. The crisis had passed; I had shown my strength. So I hastily bared my arm and pricked into it a double dosage of morphine.
Languor came speedily. I decided to not wait for Leon. So I went to bed, fell into a heavy sleep — and dreamed.
I dreamed about the heart — this reddish-brown lump on the mantel. I dreamed that it had eyes, that it watched me. I dreamed that it had a soul, a soul that was troubled and that troubled me. I dreamed that it had power, invisible and terrible; power that charmed me, cowed me, molded me, tortured me.
I must have slept solidly throughout the night. I do not remember of awaking a single time. All I remember is that it was a night of hideous dreams against which I was powerless.
I was awakened by a clatter at the stairs, by a pounding on the door, by a voice crying shrilly, queerly:
"Henri! Let me in, Henri I Let me in!"
I sprang up, into the study room, and opened the door.
François Bourlin stumbled in, his face as chalklike as the white of his eyes.
"Henri — haven't you heard—" he began in a panicky tremolo.
"Heard?" I stammered. "What?"
"About Leon. Ah, it is terrible! All on account of that woman — Fanchettel… Leon has been arrested — has confessed! Last night at twelve o'clock the police found Leblanc's mutilated body in a sewer in the Rue de Loix. He had been dead for at least two days."
François clutched my arm fearfully, and his voice fell to a husky whisper:
"Leon — Leon had cut his heart out!"
I recoiled. Then my eyes flashed to the jar on the mantel. Glistening in the fresh morning light, against the white background of wall was a shriveled lump, inert, silent, dead. And I knew that it would never beat again.
The Devil takes a hand
by Ward Sterling
I
Tennant stopped outside the door of his wife's room and went over the details of his plan for the last time. The thing was so absurdly simple that he wondered why he had not thought of it months before. There was not the least chance of a failure. He had only to plant the idea in her diseased brain and she, with the cunning that all maniacs possess, would do the rest.