"I begs!" said Battersea, candidly. "And when I can't get nuffin I steals.",
"I am--as you know--a physician, but I am also what you may not know--a man of genius. I have brains, but no money; and for experiments in chemistry, money, I regret to say, is extremely necessary. This being the case, I have needed money, and that in large quantities, all my life. As I could not make it for myself--not having the mercantile instinct--I resolved to gain it by making a rich marriage. For many years I have traveled the world. Like Ulysses, I have known men and cities, and some years ago, Chance--a deity at whose shrine I always pay my devotions--led me to Barbadoes. While there I was attracted, as I always am, by the weird and mysterious, by the superstitions of the African race. I studied the cult of Obi, the belief of the Voodoo stone, and by a strange train of circumstances, which I need not relate, I gained possession of that powerful talisman which is known to all negroid America. With this stone in my possession, I was king--so to speak--of all the black race. This power I determined to use to my own advantage, and through it to make a rich marriage.,
And from then on for hours and hours I was strapped to a torture wheel that turned and turned, minute after minute, as it ground spice and sugar and bridal meats and me relentlessly into a great suffering pulp. Could I ever in all my life have hungered for food and been able to get it past the lump in my throat that grew larger with the seconds? And if Alfred's pudding tasted of the salt of Dead Sea fruit this evening, it was from my surreptitious tears that dripped into it..
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