him.  Even the secret of this drawer was known to him, and he availed himself of it when need arose.”  M. Pigot paused, his head bent in thought; and I seemed to be gazing with him down long avenues of crime, extending far into the past—­dismal avenues like those of Pere Lachaise, where tombs elbowed each other; where, at every step, one came face to face with a mystery, a secret, or a tragedy.  Only, here, the mysteries were all solved, the secrets all uncovered, the tragedies all understood.  But only to the elect, to criminals really great, were these avenues open; to all others they were forbidden.  Alone of living men, perhaps, Crochard was free to wander there unchallenged.

Some such vision as this, I say, passed before my eyes, and I had a feeling that M. Pigot shared in it; but, after an instant, he turned back to the cabinet.

“Now, M. Simmon,” he said, briskly, in an altered voice, “if you will have the kindness to hold the drawer for a moment in this position, I will draw the serpent’s fangs.  There is not the slightest danger,” he added, seeing that Simmonds very naturally hesitated.

Thus assured, Simmonds grasped the handle of the drawer, and held it open, while the Frenchman took from his pocket a tiny flask of crystal.

“A little farther,” he said; and as Simmonds, with evident effort, drew the drawer out to its full length, a tiny, two-tined prong pushed itself forward from underneath the cabinet.  “There are the fangs,” said M. Pigot.  He held the mouth of the flask under first one and then the other, passing his other hand carefully behind and above them.  “The poison is held in place by what we in French call attraction capillaire—­I do not know the English; but I drive it out by introducing the air behind it—­ah, you see!”

He stood erect and held the flask up to the light.  It was half full of the red liquid.

“Enough to decimate France,” he said, screwed the stopper carefully into place, and put the flask in his pocket.  “Release the drawer, if you please, monsieur,” he added to Simmonds.

It sprang back into place on the instant, the arabesqued handle snapping up with a little click.

“You will observe its ingenuity,” said M. Pigot.  “It is really most clever.  For whenever the hand, struck by the poisoned fangs, loosened its hold on the drawer, the drawer sprang shut as you see, and everything was as before—­except that one man more had tasted death.  Now I open it.  The fangs fall again; they strike the gauntlet; but for that, they would pierce the hand, but death no longer follows.  By turning this button, I lock the spring, and the drawer remains open.  The man who devised this mechanism was so proud of it that he described it in a secret memoir for the entertainment of the Grand Louis.  There is a copy of that memoir among the archives of the Bibliotheque Nationale; the original is owned by Crochard.  It was he who connected that memoir with this cabinet, who rediscovered the mechanism, rewound the spring, and renewed the poison.  No doubt the stroke with the poisoned fangs, which he used to punish traitors, was the result of reading that memoir.”