The Mesmerist's Victim

“Is he so powerful?”

“More so than any King.”

“Pray, explain, my dear lady: why should I accord you my protection against a man according to your statement more powerful than a king, for a deed which may not be a crime. If you want to be revenged, take revenge, only do not bring yourself under our laws; if you do a misdeed it will be you whom I must arrest. Then we shall see all about it. That is the bargain.”

“No, my lord, you will not arrest me, for my revenge is of great utility to you, the King and France. I revenge myself by revealing the secrets of this monster.”

“Ha, this man has secrets,” said Sartines interested perforce.

“Great political secrets, my lord. But will you shield me?”

“What kind of shield?” coldly asked the magistrate; “silver or official?”

“I want to enter a convent, to live buried there, forgotten. I want a living tomb which will never be violated by any one.”

“You are not asking much. You shall have the convent. Speak!”

“As I have your word, take this casket,” said Lorenza; “it contains mysteries which will make you tremble for the safety of the sovereign and the realm. I know them but superficially but they exist, and are terrible.”

“Political mysteries, you say?”

“Have you ever heard of the great secret society?”

“The Freemasons?”

“These are the Invisibles.”

“Yes; I do not believe in them, though.”

“When you open this box, you will.”

“Let us look into it then,” he said, taking the casket from her; but, reflecting, he placed it on his desk. “No, I would rather you opened it yourself,” he added with distrust.

“I have not the key,” she replied.

“Not got the key? you bring me a box containing the fate of an empire and you forget the key?”

“Is it so hard to open a lock?”

“Not when one knows the sort it is.”

He held out to her a bunch of keys in every shape. As she took it, he noticed that her hand was cold as stone.

“Why did you not bring the key with you?” he asked.

“Because the master of the casket never lets it go from him.”

“This is the man more powerful than the King?”

“Nobody can tell what he is; eternity alone knows how long he has lived. None but the God above can see the deeds he commits.”

“But his name, his name?’

“He has changed it to my knowledge a dozen times – I knew him as Acharat.”

“And he lives – ”

“Saint – ”

Suddenly Lorenza started, shuddered, let the casket and the keys fall from her hands. She made an effort to speak, but her mouth only was contorted in a painful convulsion; she clapped her hands to her throat as if the words about to issue were stopped and choked her. Then, lifting her arms to heaven, trembling and unable to articulate a word, she fell full length on the carpet.

“Poor dear!” muttered Sartines: “but what the devil is the matter with her? she is really very pretty. There is some jealousy in this talk of revenge.”

He rang for the servants while he lifted up the Italian, who seemed with her astonished eyes and motionless lips, to be dead and far detached from this world.

“Carry out this lady with care,” he commanded to the two valets; “and leave her in the next room. Try to bring her to, but mind, no roughness. Go!”

Left alone, Sartines examined the box like a man who could value fully the discovery. He tried the keys until convinced that the lock was only a sham. Thereupon with a cold chisel he cut it off bodily. Instead of the fulminating powder or the poison which he perhaps expected, to deprive France of her most important magistrate, a packet of papers bounded up.

The first words which started up before his eyes were the following, traced in a disguised hand:

“It is time for the Grand Master to drop the name of Baron Balsamo.”

There was no signature other than the three letters “L. P. D.”

“Aha,” said the head of police, “though I do not know this writing I believe I know this name. Balsamo – let us look among the B’s.”

Opening one of the twenty-four drawers of the famous desk, he took out a little register on which was written in fine writing three or four hundred names, preceded, accompanied or followed by flourishes of the pen.

“Whew! we have a lot about this busy B,” he muttered.

He read several pages with non-equivocal tokens of discontent.

He replaced the register in the drawer to go on with inventorying the contents of the packet. He did not go far without being deeply impressed. Soon he came to a note full of names with the text in cipher. This appeared important to him; the edges were worn with fingering and pencil marks were made on the margin.

Sartines rang a bell for a servant to whom he said:

“Bring me the Chancellor’s cryptographist at once, going through the offices to gain time.”

Two minutes subsequently, a clerk presented himself, with pen in hand, his hat under one arm, and a large book under the other. Seeing him in the mirror, Sartines held out the paper to him over his shoulders, saying:

“Decipher that.”

This unriddler of secret writing was a little thin man, with puckered up lips, brows bent by searching study; his pale face was pointed up and down, and the chin quite sharp, while the deep moony eyes became bright at times.

Sartines called him his Ferret.

Ferret sat down modestly on a stool, drew his knees close together to be a table to write upon, and wrote, consulting his memory and his lexicon with an impassible face. In five minutes time he had written: