LITMIR.BIZ

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Italians who are often to be met nowadays, but whose gifts it is not easy to appreciate except in a certain degree of intimacy. They are singularly modest men as a rule, and are by no means those about whom there is the most talk in the world.

      The party sat in their places when supper was over, with cloaks and coats thrown over them against the night air, while Kalmon talked of all sorts of things that seemed to have the least possible connection with each other, but which somehow came up quite naturally. He went from the last book on Dante to a new discovery in chemistry, thence to Japanese monks and their beliefs, and came back smiling to the latest development of politics, which led him quite naturally to the newest play, labour and capital, the German Emperor, and the immortality of the soul.

      "I believe you know everything!" exclaimed Marcello, with an admiring look. "Or else I know nothing, which is really more probable!" The boy laughed.

      "You have not told us about the new form of death yet," said Aurora, leaning on her elbows and burying her young hands in her auburn hair as she looked across the table at Kalmon.

      "You will never sleep again if I tell you about it," answered the Professor, opening his brown eyes very wide and trying to look terrible, which was quite impossible, because he had such a kindly face. "You do not look frightened at all," he added, pretending to be disappointed.

      "Let me see the thing," Aurora said. "Perhaps we shall all be frightened."

      "It looks very innocent," Kalmon answered. "Here it is."

      He took a small leather case from his pocket, opened it, and drew out a short blue glass tube, with a screw top. It contained half a dozen white tablets, apparently just like those in common use for five-grain doses of quinine.

      A little murmur of disappointment went around the table. The new form of death looked very commonplace. Corbario was the only one who showed any interest.

      "May I see?" he asked, holding out his hand to take the tube.

      Kalmon would not give it to him, but held the tube before his eyes under the bright light of the lamp.

      "Excuse me," he said, "but I make it a rule never to let it go out of my hands. You understand, don't you? If it were passed round, some one might lay it down, it might be forgotten, somebody might take it for something else."

      "Of course," said Folco, looking intently at the tube, as though he could understand something about the contents by mere inspection. "You are quite right. You should take no risks with such things—especially as they look so innocent!"

      He leaned back in his chair again, as if satisfied, and his eyes met the Contessa's at the same moment. There was no reason why she should not have looked at him just then, but he rested one elbow on the table and shaded his eyes from the light.

      "It is strange to reflect," said Kalmon, looking at the tube thoughtfully, "that one of those little things would be enough to put a Hercules out of misery, without leaving the slightest trace which science could discover."

      Corbario was still shading his eyes from the light.

      "How would one die if one took it?" asked Aurora. "Very suddenly?"

      "I call it the sleeping death," answered the Professor. "The poisoned person sinks into a sweet sleep in a few minutes, smiling as if enjoying the most delightful dreams."

      "And one never wakes up?" inquired Marcello.

      "Never. It is impossible, I believe. I have made experiments on animals, and have not succeeded in waking them by any known means."

      "I suppose it congests the brain, like opium," observed Corbario, quietly.

      "Not at all, not at all!" answered Kalmon, looking benevolently at the little tube which contained his discovery. "I tell you it leaves no trace whatever, not even as much as is left by death from an electric current. And it has no taste, no smell—it seems the most innocent stuff in the world."

      Corbario's hand again lay on the table and he was gazing out into the night, as if he were curious about the weather. The moon was just rising, being past the full.

      "Is that all you have of the poison?" he asked in an idle tone.

      "Oh, no! This is only a small supply which I carry with me for experiments. I have made enough to send all our thirty-three millions of Italians to sleep for ever!"

      Kalmon laughed pleasantly.

      "If this could be properly used, civilisation would make a gigantic stride," he added. "In war, for instance, how infinitely pleasanter and more æsthetic it would be to send the enemy to sleep, with the most delightful dreams, never to wake again, than to tear people to pieces with artillery and rifle bullets, and to blow up ships with hundreds of poor devils on board, who are torn limb from limb by the explosion."

      "The difficulty," observed the Contessa, "would be to induce the enemy to take your poison quietly. What if the enemy objected?"

      "I should put it into their water supply," said Kalmon.

      "Poison the water!" cried the Signora Corbario. "How barbarous!"

      "Much less barbarous than shedding oceans of blood. Only think—they would all go to sleep. That would be all."

      "'I CALL IT THE SLEEPING DEATH,' ANSWERED THE PROFESSOR"

      "I thought," said Corbario, almost carelessly, "that there was no longer any such thing as a poison that left no traces or signs. Can you not generally detect vegetable poisons by the mode of death?"

      "Yes," answered the Professor, returning the glass tube to its case and the latter to his pocket. "But please to remember that although we can prove to our own satisfaction that some things really exist, we cannot prove that any imaginable thing outside our experience cannot possibly exist. Imagine the wildest impossibility you can think of; you will not induce a modern man of science to admit the impossibility of it as absolute. Impossibility is now a merely relative term, my dear Corbario, and only means great improbability. Now, to illustrate what I mean, it is altogether improbable that a devil with horns and hoofs and a fiery tail should suddenly appear, pick me up out of this delightful circle, and fly away with me. But you cannot induce me to deny the possibility of such a thing."

      "I am so glad to hear you say that," said the Signora, who was a religious woman.

      Kalmon looked at her a moment and then broke into a peal of laughter that was taken up by the rest, and in which the good lady joined.

      "You brought it on yourself," she said at last.

      "Yes," Kalmon answered. "I did. From your point of view it is better to admit the possibility of a mediæval devil with horns than to have no religion at all. Half a loaf is better than no bread."

      "Is that stuff of yours animal, vegetable, or mineral?" asked Corbario as the laughter subsided.

      "I don't know," replied the Professor. "Animal, vegetable, mineral? Those are antiquated distinctions, like the four elements of the alchemists."

      "Well—but what is the thing, then?" asked Corbario, almost impatiently. "What should you call it in scientific language?"

      Kalmon closed his eyes for a moment, as if to collect his thoughts.

      "In scientific language," he began, "it is probably H three C seven, parenthesis, H two C plus C four O five, close parenthesis, HC three O."

      Corbario laughed carelessly.

      "I am no wiser than before," he said.

      "Nor I," answered the Professor. "Not a bit."

      "It is much simpler to call it 'the sleeping death,' is it not?" suggested the Contessa.

      "Much

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