Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 169: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT KNEEL. the rig in the market square at ten, if you wish—which is a modest hour.” She hesitated further, her features trou- bled, her breast agitated. He said: “ You don’t wish me to put it bluntly, Adele, that it is the price for saving him? You can have your choice.” He was smiling disarmingly at her as he said it, but his eyes held some odd fascina- tion for the girl, as might the eyes of some being of omnipotence who held the keys of life and death. Madame appeared anxiously in the door- way. “ M’siew’ will come?” she asked simply, trustfully, indicating the bed on which Ray- mond lay. They reéntered the room. Flaubert Deschesnes went quickly to the bedside. “‘ He is worse!” he said. “ But it is be- yond me, I fear, madame. I would not touch the case. I will try and get news through from the village to the doctor at St. Gauthier.” At the door he turned to the girl. “ That drug in the morning is his only chance, Adéle.” She met his eyes again. They were smil- ing, but there remained in them some inex- orable thing. ‘“‘T will do as you wish.” “Tn all things?” “ In all things,” she said helplessly. IV. Ir was a praiseworthy habit of Joseph Bedard to rise early. It was less praise- worthy that he should spend time that had better be devoted to the daily sweeping of the store in other things. In the room that formed the laboratory of Flaubert Deschesnes, and in which, according to the good madame, he held audience with the devil, were too potent lures for Joseph. One was the library, masked behind green curtained shelves. Into this treasure house m’sieuw’ had but recently been in- itiated by Flaubert, his master, and his appetite, whetted by the curious book of tales he had just finished reading, caused Joseph to take a terrible delight in drawing aside the curtain, in moments free from 795 observation, and considering the array of titles and the possibilities of the contents. He felt a sense of pride that this was man’s domain; that M. Deschesnes had himself commanded madame to keep clear of it, lest she be tempted by its untidiness into estab- lishing fatal order. Joseph,” declared m’sieu’, “‘ can do all that requires to be done. It is not the place for a woman.” And Bedard had swollen with pride at the thing, and heeded not the sniff and the scorn of the woman. He did not hear the added clause, because it did not escape beyond the lips of his mas- ter: ‘“‘ Joseph is sufficiently a fool to be safe. As for madame, she has the natural curi- osity of a woman, which is a dangerous thing.” Curiosity? Ah, why awaken it, then, Flaubert Deschesnes, in a foolish moment, even in a man of simple mind, with the book of Rabelaisian tales? Joseph had be- gun now to take an interest beyond the innocent mental pastime of holding posé- mortems on his favorite game of draughts. The one just finished was the third volume. Hair raising tales, but to the old man as vivid and real as if enacted before his cred- ulous eyes. He had been specially careful to keep the knowledge of this reading from m sieuw’—just why he hardly knew. He drew back the green curtain now, fingering the volume lovingly. Its wine colored cover had attracted him greatly, no less than its title, “Famous Poisonings of Medieval History.” Such tales! A woman who had chosen to be rid of her husband .. . an apothecary who had used his talents wrongfully ... Why must he always think of M. Deschesnes at this point? And, too, of the strange locked case, leather covered, that stood in one dark corner? ‘That was the second potent lure for Joseph in this room. Once he had asked concerning it, in a mo- ment of boldness, drawing the answer sharply: ‘You must never touch it. It contains my most valuable drugs, and is for use only in—emergencies.” Joseph knew, though—being not the fool he was accounted—that curious events al- ways followed the use of it. When m’stew’ Eomichooks.com