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Page 83
"It was many days before I could see how anything short of a miracle
could enable me to escape. I tried to calmly reason it all out, and
every time came to the same horrible conclusion, viz.: I must rot
there unless help came to me from without. This seemed impossible,
and all the horrors of a lingering death stared me in the face.
Every two or three days one of the jailers would come to the slit
in the masonry and leave there a dish of water and a few crusts of
bread. I tried on one occasion to speak with him, but he only
laughed in my face and turned away. Finally I hit upon a plan which
seemed to offer the only possible means of escape. In my college
days I was well acquainted with M. Charcot, and even assisted in
some of his earlier hypnotic experiments. The subject interested
me, and I followed it closely till I became something of an adept
myself. There were in those days but few people I could not
mesmerise, provided sufficient opportunity were allowed me for
hypnotic suggestion. I determined to see if any of this old power
still remained with me, and, if so, to strive to render my jailer
subservient to my will. But how should I keep him within ear-shot
long enough to work upon him? Clearly all appeals to pity were
useless. I must excite his greed, nothing else would reach him.
This was not an easy thing to do without a sou in my possession,
yet I did it. When I heard his step I crawled to the opening in
the wall and mumbled in a crazy sort of a way about a hidden
treasure. At the word 'treasure' I saw him pause and listen, but
I pretended not to be aware of his presence and rambled on, in a
loose, disjointed fashion, about piracies committed by me and the
great amount of booty I had secreted. My plan worked perfectly.
The jailer came to the aperture in the wall and called me to him.
Muttering incoherently, I obeyed. He asked me what offence brought
me there, and I, with a good deal of intentional misunderstanding,
told him I was a pirate and a smuggler. He asked me where the
treasure I had been talking about was hidden. My reply,--I
remember the exact words in which I couched it,--made him mine
completely. I said: 'We buried it near Fez-- Treasure? I don't
know anything about any treasure.'
"To all the many questions he then asked me I returned only
incoherent replies, but I was careful to be again raving about
buried riches upon the next visit. In this way I kept him by me
long enough to influence him, and in less than a month he was
completely subject to my will. I tested my power over him in divers
ways. Any delicacy I wished I compelled him to bring me. In this
way I was enabled to regain a portion of my lost strength. When I
concluded the time had come for me to make good my escape, I caused
him to come to my cell at midnight and remove the bricks from the
slit while I put on the disguise he had brought me. Once out of my
stone tomb we carefully walled it up again and then departed to find
my imaginary hidden treasure. We made our way without trouble to
Algiers, for my companion had money, and sailed thence via Gibraltar
for England. During the trip my companion jumped overboard and was
drowned in the Bay of Biscay. Thus I was completely freed from Ceuta
and its terrible pest-hole.
"From England I sailed to New York, reaching America penniless and
in ill health. Things not going to my liking in New York, I came
to Boston and took up my old callings of gambler and detective. It
was at this time that I saw John Darrow's curious notice in the
newspaper, offering, in the event of his murder, a most liberal
reward to anyone who would bring the assassin to justice.
"Mon Dieu! How I needed money. I would have bartered my soul for
a tithe of that amount. It was the old, old story, only new in Eden.
Ah! but how I loved her! She must have money, money, always money!
That was ever her cry. When I could not supply it she sought it of
others, and this drove me mad. If, I said to myself, I could only
get this reward! This was something really worth working for, and if
I could but get it, she should be mine only. I at once set to work
upon the problem.
"It was not an easy thing to solve. I might be able to hire a man
to do the deed for me, but he would hardly be willing to hang for
it without disclosing my part in the transaction. It was at this
time that I first met M. Latour on Decatur Street. He at once
impressed me as being just the man I wanted, and I began to gradually
subdue his will. In this circumstances greatly aided me. When I
found him he was in very poor health and without any means of
sustenance. His daughter was able to earn a little, but not nearly
enough to keep the wolf from the door. Add to this that he had a
cancer, which several physicians had assured him would prove fatal
within a year, that he was afflicted with an almost insane fear that
his daughter would come to want after his death, and you have before
you the conditions which determined my course. My first thought
was to influence him to do the deed himself, but, recalling the
researches of M. Charcot in these matters, I came to the conclusion
that such a course would be almost certain to lead to detection,
since a hypnotic subject can only be depended upon so long as the
conditions under which he acts are precisely those which have been
suggested to him. Any unforeseen variations in these conditions
and he fails to act, exposes everything, and the whole carefully
planned structure falls to the ground. When, therefore, the time
came which I had set for the deed, I found it possible to drug M.
Latour, abduct him from his home, and to keep him confined and
unconscious until I had killed Mr. Darrow in a manner I will describe
in due course. As soon as I had committed the murder and established
what I fondly believed would be a perfect alibi in my attendance at
the examination, I secretly conveyed the still unconscious M. Latour
to his rooms and awaited his return to consciousness. I then asked
him how he came in such a state and what he was doing in Dorchester.
He was, of course, ignorant of everything. Little by little I
worked upon him till he came to believe himself guilty of John
Darrow's murder.
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