I N one corner of his solitary cell, with face buried in his hands, sat Jean Lescaut, wife poisoner, waiting for the morrow on which he would expiate his crimes.
Each hour as the sentry made his rounds, he saw the prisoner sitting in that same hopeless attitude of despair. A month before when he first heard his sentence he had raved and fought impotently. Night after night, and day after day he had paced his narrow cell like a caged animal, but now that was over. Already the shadow of the doom which was so near had fallen upon him.
Presently there was a sound of footsteps, and the prisoner heard two people in conversation coming down the corridor. But he did not stir; events of that day had no interest for him: he was to be electrocuted on the morrow. The steps stopped outside his cell, and he heard the attendant saying, “I am sorry, Doctor Van[116] Horne, but I can give you only an hour. Orders are orders, you know.”
The heavy barred door swung open, was closed and locked again, and the turnkey walked away. Jean Lescaut looked up wearily and without curiosity. He saw a tall clerical gentleman regarding him intently.
“Jean Lescaut,” began the stranger, stepping close to the prisoner, “I have come here to-day to offer you the only thing on earth which you care for—liberty.”
A quick flush of color dyed the prison pallor of the man in irons, then as quickly faded again.
“I am going to offer this to you,” the doctor continued, “not because I think you innocent of the crime of which you were convicted, not because I have any friendship for you, or because I desire to defeat justice. The proposition I make you is purely in the interest of science. Have you ever been hypnotized?”
The prisoner shook his head.
“Have you ever seen anyone in such a condition?”
Lescaut nodded wearily. All this talk irritated him. He wished that the man would stop looking at him so intently and questioning him so much. It reminded him of that other day in the court room when the lawyer for the prosecution had looked at him in just such a way, and asked him so many questions that he[117] had become confused and told many things that he had never intended to tell.
“If you have seen it done, so much the better. You have probably seen persons put under this influence and then undergo tests which you know would be a physical impossibility for them to endure otherwise. I have myself given subjects arsenic, telling them it was sugar, and they felt no bad effects. I have also burned with hot irons and thrust pins into the flesh of such persons without their feeling any pain.
“Now what I have to propose to you, Jean Lescaut, is this,—to-morrow at noon you are to go to the electric chair where 1800 volts of electricity will be sent through your body. At eleven o’clock to-morrow I will come to your cell and put you into an hypnotic sleep. You will go to the chair, show all the symptoms and effects of a person electrocuted, and you will apparently be dead. In reality, however, you will only be asleep. And, as I can easily obtain your body from the prison doctor on the pretense of using it for dissection purposes, I can then awaken you.”
The prisoner leaned over and clutched the doctor’s arm so tightly that he winced. “And what then?” he whispered eagerly.
“Then, as I have just said, I will awaken you. I will have proven that a certain theory of mine is correct or false, and you will have[118] obtained your liberty, for I shall not hinder you from going where you will after the experiment is over. But I must first try and see if I can get control of you. You may not be susceptible to my influence.”
An hour later the turnkey came to inform Van Horne that his hour had expired, and the preliminary trial must have been a success, for there was a smile of triumph on the doctor’s face as he bade the prisoner good day.
Next day an hour previous to the time set for the electrocution of Jean Lescaut, Doctor Van Horne again visited the prisoner in his cell. At twelve o’clock two attendants came and conducted him to the fatal room. The reporters and prison officials present remarked on the calmness of the doomed man. He walked to the chair without assistance, and submitted to the strapping down and adjusting of the sponges and electrodes without a tremor.
When all was ready the warden stepped to the side of the chair. “Jean Lescaut,” said he, “I am about to give the signal for you to be sent into eternity. Have you anything to say?”
The man in the chair shook his head. The warden stepped back out of sight and made a sign to an assistant behind the screen. A switch was thrown on and the voltmeter registered that nearly 2000 volts of electricity were passing through the hooded figure in the chair. The warden held his watch in his hand, glancing[119] first at it, then at Lescaut. At the end of eight seconds he made another sign, and the man at the switch cut off the current.
The prison doctor stepped up from one side and examined the body carefully. “Justice is satisfied. I pronounce Jean Lescaut dead,” he said solemnly, and motioning to two of the attendants, he bade them carry away the body.
That night, in a dissecting room in the suburbs of Albany, a crowd of scientific men assembled at the invitation of Doctor Van Horne to witness an important experiment. No one knew what that experiment was to be; but every one had accepted the invitation, for Van Horne had a high reputation among his colleagues.
When the last expected guest had arrived, the doctor made a few remarks to the company. “I have invited you here to-night,” he said, “to witness an experiment, which, if I am not mistaken, I have the distinction of being the first to attempt. I have to-day taken the law in my own hands; but, if the theory on which I have been working is correct, justice will n............