He was half-clothed, pale as the white dress of Isabella Dallas, and evidently, from the wild look in his eyes and the quivering of his nether lip, badly scared. Stopping short a few paces from the door, he held up the lamp which he carried, to survey the astonishing scene before him. The sight of Jen tongue-tied and immovable, of Isabella weeping on her knees by the bedside, of the bed itself vacant of its dead occupant--all these things were calculated to shock even stronger nerves than those of David Sarby. Nevertheless, after a pause of sheer astonishment, he managed to stammer out a question:,
"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.,
"Why, of course," interrupted Isabella again. "Don't you remember. Dido, you were asked if you had taken it?".
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