Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 6, June 1999

“What of it, sir? Do you think me incapable of reason? Do you think I can be insensible to the fact that I was myself being poisoned with arsenic through the agent of your patent emetic? All the symptoms were there, and unhidden by the ingraft!”

“Impossible! ’Twas the Hand of the Lord that doomed you to death!”

Treviscoe leaned back in the chair. “But I yet live, and I think that I would not had I continued to take your treatment. Even so, I can well conceive it were not by your hand that the arsenic was introduced into your purgative. There is oft a touch of naivety to the faithful that clouds their reason.

“Harken, doctor! Dr. Merwood informs me that seven of ten who catch the smallpox meet death, and that the evolution of ingraft into disease, while not unknown, is relatively rare. How, then, have the last several of your variolated patients fallen victim to smallpox? I will tell you: their constitutions were weakened by arsenic so that any resistance to illness they should have had if healthy was therewith in abeyance. The smallpox took hold of them, and they died. So it would have been with me, too, had I been vulnerable to the disease at all.

“You have been the agent of death, Dr. Tindle, not by the will of God but by the will of Lucifer in his influence over the evil of mankind.”

“No! Nor!”

“Deny then that the symptoms are those of arsenic poison.”

“There are many such causes for such symptoms.”

“But none of them are associated with smallpox! You have been hiding the truth from yourself, sir!

“Did it never occur to you, that between the effects of your self-ad-ministered treatment for the French disease and the disease itself your mind may have become unhinged? That your holy revelations were the product of an imbalanced mental faculty? It has been known before, sir! Come now, you are a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians! What are the effects of mercury upon the reason? Why do we call a lunatic ‘mad as a hatter,’ that is, as mad as one who is exposed to the ill effects of quicksilver in the facture of felt?”

“God is merciful. He hath forgiven my trespasses.” Tindle buried his face in his hands and began to weep.

“And were you aware, Dr. Tindle, that the survival of your patients greatly concerns the gamblers of Bath? My own survival whilst in your care was the object of a large wager.”

There was no reaction. Tindle was beyond reach. His body was wracked with sobbing.

“I shall let myself out, sir,” said Treviscoe. “I have another call to make that will not wait.”

There was a silver bell attached to the door of Joseph Coridon’s shop. It tinkled merrily, a welcome and comforting sound bespeaking the normality of daily commerce. Treviscoe found no comfort in it. It might as well have been a death knell.

Coridon looked up from where he was packaging medicines in paper. “How may I be of service to the gentleman?”

“I had your name from Mr. Jervase Barkway,” said Treviscoe. “He told me that you were in the way of arranging certain contracts.”

Coridon laughed. “I? I’m but a simple apothecary, sir. What sort of contracts had you in mind?”

“Of the life insurance variety.”

“Oh no, sir! I mix preparations of physic.”

“ ’Tis most strange — Mr. Barkway was pointedly specific in his recommendation. He and I are colleagues of a sort — we met at Lloyd’s in London. Many a wager is laid down there in the form of a contract.”

“Then it’s a wager you’re after, sir,” said Coridon. “Now, that’s a different matter, isn’t it? But no contracts if you please. While there’s no harm in a wager, it mightn’t appear that way to the Assizes, if you get my meaning, were there a document signed and sealed and all.”

“I apprehend your point, Mr. Coridon. Some might take it as callous that wagers were made on whether, say, a little girl might die as the result of an ingrafting.”

“Still, as I said, where’s the harm in it? Some good may come of winning a full purse, after all.”

“I perceive we understand each other. But I was led to believe that you only give odds concerning the patients of Dr. John Tindle.”

Coridon paused. “Were you now, sir?”

“As it happens, it is a patient of his I am interested in. Have you known the doctor long?”

“Oh yes, sir. Many years. You might even say I was apprenticed to him, after a fashion. My father — Mr. Coridon, Senior, that was — sent me with him when he looked after many worthies — earls and baronets and such. My father thought it would be good training for an apothecary to learn at the side of an eminent physician. I was constantly by his side in those days.”

“But he has declined in his age, has he not?”

“Aye, sad to say — taking up with that drunken butcher Labbett, for example, if I may be so bold, although I don’t mind a tankard or two myself on occasion.”

“And the prognoses of his patients have similarly declined?”