New York Dispatch

THE CHEMIST'S STORY. A THRILLING SKETCH.

It was about eleven o'clock on a stormy evening that I bade good night to my student, Tom Richards, at the door of my laboratory, at the south end of the college building.

"Good night, Professor," said Tom; "we are going to have a fall of hydrogen, oxygen, and a trace of saline."

Hydrogen and oxygen-in our nomenclature, H. O.-is water.

"I hope;" I said, in answer to Tom's playful words, "that it will not be rain before I can get home."

"Oh, no, it won't for an hour yet," said Tom.

"Then," I said, with a sigh, noticing that the mercury in my barometer was rapidly falling-a sign of a violent storm, "I shall certainly get wet."

Tom was very anxious to know what would keep me up after twelve o'clock, so I told him I was about to commence analyzing the stomach of a Mrs. Johnson, whose husband now lay in P- jail (just across the road from the college) on suspicion that he was the murderer.

Tom said I had worked hard enough that day, and deserved the night to myself. He spoke the truth. Still, I had delayed examining the woman's stomach so long, and the trial was so close at hand, that I could not in conscience put off the examination further.

As Tom was passing out of the college yard, through the gate, his head turned, bidding me good night, he brushed against a man standing with his back to the college and his face toward the prison. The street lamp showed me that the man was clad in the police uniform.

Re-entering my laboratory, I took down a glass jar from a shelf, and sat down before my sink to examine it. This jar, which contained Mrs. Johnson's stomach, was covered by a cloth, duly tied with strings, and properly sealed with my official seal in red wax.

Breaking through the cloth and seal, I lifted the stomach out with a dissecting-hook, and laid it on a white platter before me, then became busily engaged in applying those tests to its contents by which we detect the presence of injurious substances.

An hour had passed since the departure of young Richards. I had carefully emptied the contents of the stomach into a number of bowls and basins. I had labored hard to discover traces of poison in all this, but had been unsuccessful.

Joe Johnson, the suspected man, had been a student of mine, a few years before. I thought him a good hearted, intelligent fellow, only a little wild, and I really began to hope that he might prove innocent, when, among the macerated food, I came upon a small, infinitesimal white grain.

By careful manipulation, and the use of my magnifying glass, I managed to get this upon a piece of smoked glass, and examined it. I was then certain I had discovered arsenic, but, to make assurance doubly sure, I determined to apply a well known test for that poison.

Accordingly, I placed in the woman's stomach the usual acids, and then turned on the blow-pipe flame, and presently, upon a white and beautiful porcelain ground, there appeared that brilliant, metallic mark, worthy of Cain's brow, which is the sign and signet of the Poison Fiend.

"Yes," I exclaimed, as I saw the fatal blazon "Joe Johnson is the murderer of his wife! With the evidence of that mark to back me, no power can save him from the rope."

"Do you really think so?" said a calm, squeaking voice behind me.

I turned quickly, and discovered a tall, thin policeman, with red, weak, and watery eyes, standing at my office door and staring in. His body looked as if it had been rolled out long between hands, like a molasses candlestick. His nose was merely an elongated fleshy plug, and his forehead was decorated with two red streaks, instead of eyebrows. He had no expression at all in his face, and his policeman's hat was so large that it threatened to settle down on his shoulders.

His uniform reassured me, and I addressed him thus, with some impatience: "My friend, I suppose I am wanted to attend an inquest; or what is your purpose?"

"No, doctor, the man ain't dead yet."

"Anything in the surgical way?" I was a police surgeon as well as coroner.

"No."

"Well, then, why do you come for me at this time of night?"

"Don't bother, perfesser. The man ain't dead yet; but they say he will die before morning."

"Are doctors attending him?"

"Oh! he's in good hands, professor."

"What's the matter with him?"

"Well," said the official, "some folks say he's got so much knowledge into him that he can't live under it."

"Cerebral disorder, eh?"

"What?" asked the man.

"Brain disorder, I mean-something wrong here." I touched my forehead, and so did he, as he said: "Ay: and I thought I'd drop in and tell you if you was going to the station to-morrow, to take a look and see if it's post mortem or not. Beside, I wanted to see where I could always find you in case of need."

I bowed, and attributed his visit to a feeling of curiosity. He sat on the sink, with one foot thrown over the other, and wiped his nose with a dirty handkerchief several times, while his eyes wandered about the room, as if noting all it contained.

Finally he spoke, like one who thought himself called on to say something: "Perfessor, there's been a terrible accident this afternoon-terrible, too."

"Ah!" said I.

"Awful" said he.

"What was it?"

"Nitro-glycerine explosion up in the iron mills. A hundred fellow-mortals killed."

"Sad!"

"Affecting, very!" Here he rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Perfessor, what is that nitro-glycerine?"

"It is a very dangerous article," I answered, happy to display my knowledge. "It has nearly twice the destructiveness of gunpowder, but, unlike it, does not explode on the application of heat. A red-hot coal dropped into it will not explode it. It will freeze; it is yellow and greasy."

"You don't mean to say so!" said the officer, interrupting me in disagreeable tones in the very middle of a choice extract from one of my lectures.

"Why, but you haven't told me how it goes off. If fire won't do it, what the duse will?"

I told him that if it were pressed, or anything fell upon it, it would explode.

"Place it under the crusher of a cider-mill, strike it with a hammer, let a weight fall upon it from a height"

"Yes," said my man; "and that rouses its volcano, does it? How does it come, Professor?"

"In little cans-why, like these," said I, discovering that there was a little can of it on the marble sink, which I had carelessly neglected to replace in the cellar.

I then took a little of the glycerine and spread it on a thin piece of paper, and, laying the paper on an anvil, struck it with a hammer. A slight explosion and a flame burst from the paper.

"Now, really" said the policeman, starting back. "I suppose, Professor, that there can would make a mighty noise if allowed to explode in here all at once?"

"It would blow the entire building to atoms," said I, resuming the analysis of Mrs. Johnson's stomach.

"No," I heard the policeman remark, in deliberate tones, "you don't say so?"

The next moment I lay on my back, a gag in my mouth, terribly frightened and sick at heart. Over me stood the policeman, and the first thing that functionary did was, looking me straight in the face, to take off his nose.

He then rid himself of his red eyebrows, hair, cap, and overcoat, and became a determined-looking fellow, with the eyes of a fiend and the nose of a Roman.

"So, you think," said the metamorphosed in the tones of a gentleman, "that nothing can save Joe Johnson from the rope? Poor fellow! it does look like it: But, my dear Professor, Joe Johnson is fortunate enough to have in me a devoted friend, as well as brother. I have undertaken to save him, and he shall be saved. In order to attain this end, it will be necessary to remove from the face of the earth not only the stomach of his miserable wife yonder, but also, my dear Professor-I'm sorry to be obliged to say it, for I believe you were my brother's teacher and friend-yourself as well."

I saw that he was in deadly earnest.

"Your death must apparently result from accident-at least, so it will seem to the authorities. My brother is in jail; they will not suspect him, and they certainly will not suspect me."

He took me in his arms, placed me in a chair, and bound me to it, and then from a side pocket he produced another rope.

Was it myself who was to hang instead of Joe Johnson? No-yes.

He placed the line pulley-like, over an arm of the hanging chandelier. This was too slight a support even for one of my slender frame. It was not to be hanging, then.

To one end of the rope he attached a weight, and raised it by pulling the other end six or eight feet from the floor. The loose end he secured to the sink.

Was he mad? Did he mean to draw me under this weight, and send me out of the world in a novel way, by letting it fall, and dashing my brains out?"

To the sink end he attached a long, yellow string. Under the weight on the floor he placed the can of nitro-glycerine. I recognized the yellow string; it was a fuse, and would burn sixty minutes. It would burn across the marble slab-there was no hope of its igniting any substance that might warn my friends.

"Do you begin to see through it?" asked Joe Johnson's brother.

I believe I cursed him with my eyes. I could only breathe through my nostrils, and the great veins were swelling and growing hot in my forehead.

Drawing a match from his pocket, he lighted and applied it to the fuse-that little tyrant that gave a man an hour to live, and killed him at the end of it; that little irresponsible terror that, less merciful than Providence, told a man the second he was to die, if fright and horror spared him.

Slowly the flame crept, snake-like, around the twine.

"In one hour," said the poisoner's brother, "you will be in eternity! I will watch with you for half an hour; the other half you will spend alone."

He sat down some minutes in a chair, watching the flame. Then he arose, and took the piece of porcelain, with the murderer's mark thereon, from the table, and shook his head gloomily,

"I am chemist enough to know it is arsenic," he said. "Yes; those bright metallic eyes, betrayer of the guilty! Science, thou wouldst kill my brother. Thou shalt save him. Let us see in whose hands thou art most powerful. Let the good Professor use his chemicals; the bad brother only asks-a little can of nitro-glycerine."

I heard this speech, indeed; but, great heavens! my eyes and not my ears were busiest then; or from beneath the table, covered by the crimson cloth of which I have before spoken, and which I faced, appeared the head of a child. The hair was rumpled, and the blue eyes were just open from sleep. The intelligent forehead was wrinkled strangely. It was my boy Billy.

I was afraid he would cry "Papa!" If he did, the implacable man would add the murder of the child to the murder of the father. But my boy did none of this. He had, I suppose, crept under the table unknown to me, and fallen asleep there.

I tried to tell the little fellow to hide again, and wait for the final half hour when my tormenter would be gone. Whether he understood me or not, aided by what he had heard, I did not know; but he quickly withdrew his little curly head, first kissing his hand lightly at me, and then shaking his fist at the schemer watching so belligerently his dumb fire-agents.

The half hour wore slowly away. Oh, heavens! what agony did I suffer! not for myself, but for my child. A slight noise might discover his presence; the match might run its tether sooner than was expected. He might be murdered or blown to atoms.

The fuse burned on-on! The half hour is up! The brother of the murderer rises to go. Joy!

"Commit your soul to Heaven's keeping," he said. "You who hold the evidence of my brother's guilt-nothing can save you now."

With that he turned to take his hat from off the table covered with the crimson cloth, beneath which hid my priceless boy.

Something attracted his attention. He held out his hands and leaned forward. I thought he had discovered my boy. No; he was lifting something in either hand-the wires of the electric battery.

In another instant my boy had leaped from under the table, and was turning the crank fast and furiously. The murderer's brother was in the power of my boy. He could not drop the wires; he was helpless and motionless.

How my boy cried for help! The old college rung again. The prisoner's brother added his voice to my boy's in his agony. He begged, he beseeched; all his nerves were racked-great waves of galvanism leaped, and surged, and trembled, and jarred over every sensitive nerve and fibre.

Still my boy was inflexible, shouted, and turned the faster.

Unperceived upon the marble, in the track of the burning fuse, was a pool of inflammable oil. In an instant, a great length burned away. It would last just five minutes and no more.

"Father!" shouted my boy, "if no assistance comes, this villain must die with us. I dare not let him free! Help! help! help!"

Alas! I could not answer him. But some one else did. Thank heaven! The fuse is burnt up. The rope is on fire, the weight trembles; another minute it falls upon the nitro-glycerine.

The door opens. Tom Richards, on a midnight visit to the sick, has heard the cry, he comprehends all, seizes the can in his hands-the weight descends, indeed, but not on the death-dealing oil. No; down it goes through the office floor down, down, like an evil spirit, to give back a dull, metallic echo from the stones of the cellar beneath.

We were saved. Joe Johnson, the poisoner, was hanged, but his brother remains unpunished by the law, for he stabbed himself with a knife, and thus escaped the hangman's rope.