The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-07-16
T III E
 LAST LAUGH.

You said they were'
 T said they should be-"
 Didn't you hear them go?''
 T heard nothing but the clock all night It was like Big Ben striking at the last striking to the fellow on the drop.'
 And in that open eye I saw at last a deep glimmer of the ordeal through which he had passed.
 But my dear old Rallies, if they're still on the premises"-
 The thought was too thrilling for a finished sentence
 T hope they are" he said grimly. going to the door. There's gas oni Was that burning when you came in?" Now that I though of it, yet, 1t had been.
 And there's a frightfully foul smeil.a added as I followed Rallies down the | stairs. He turned to me gravely with his hand upon the front-room door. and at the same moment I saw coat with an astrakhan collar hanging on the pegs. They are in here Bunny" he said, and | turned the handle.
 The door would only open a few inches | But detestable odor came out, with a broad bar of yellow gasllght. Rallies put his handkerchief to his nose. I followed his example, signing to our ally to do the same, and In another minute we had all three squeezed into the room. The man with the yellow boots was
 
 carcass sprawled upon the table, and at a glance it was evident that both men had been dead some hours. The old Camorrist had the stem of a liqueur glass between his swollen blue fingers, one of which had been cut in the breakage, and the livid flesh was also brown with the last blood that it would ever shed. His face was on the table. the huge mustachs projecting from under either 1eaden cheek vet looking itself strangely alive Broken bread and -craps of frozen macearonl lay upon the cloth and at the bottom of two soup plates and a tureen. The maccaroni had tinge of tomato, and there was a crimson dram left in the tumblers, with | an empty fiaseo to show whence 1t came. But near the great gray head upon the table another lqueur glass stood. un- broken. and still full of some white and stinlxing liquid. and near that tiny silver flask, which made me reeoil from Raffes as had not from the dead. for I knew 1t to be his.
 Come out o1 this poisonous air." ha said sternly, "and will tell you how 1t has happened.'
 So we all three gathered together in the hall But it was Rallies who stood nearest the street door. his back to 1t. his eyes upon us two And thought it was to me only that he spoke at first he would pause from point 60 point and translate into Italian for the benefit of the one tyeu diicI lO whom ne owed ms nfe.
 You probably don't even known the name. Bunny" he began. "of the deadliest poison vet known to science It is cyanide of cacodyl. and have carried that smIlI flash of it about wilh me for months. Where I got it matters nothing; the whole points Is that a mere sniff reduces flesh to clay. have never had any opin- ion of suicide as you know, but I always felt 1t worth while to be forearmed against the very worst Well, n bottle of this stuff Is calculated to stiffen an ordinary roomful of ordinary people within five minutes; and I remembered my flask when they had me as good as crucihed in the small hours of this morning. asked them to take 1t out of my pocket I begged them to giva me drink before they left me. And what do suppose they did?"
 | I thought of many things but suggested | none while Rallies turned this much of 1 his statement into efficiently fluent ftal- | ian But when he faced me again his face | war still flaming. That beast corbuccil' said he; ''how | can I pity him? He took the flask; he would give me none: he licked me in the 1 face instead. My idea was that he at | least should go with me--to sell my life 1 as dearly as that-and a sniff would have settled us both But no, he must tan talize and torment me. He thought 1t brandy; he must take it downstairs to
 
 I any pity for hound like that2" Let us go.' at lest said hoarsely as Rallies finished spea>Sng in Italian. and his second listener stood open-mouthed. We will go'' said Rallies, "and we will chance being seen. If the worst comes to the worst this good chap will prove that I have been tied up since 1 o'clock this morning. and the medical evidence will decide how long those dogs have been dead"
 But the worst did not come to the worst, more power to my unforgotten friend the cabman, who never came for ward to say what manner of men he had driven to Bloomsbury Square at top speed on the very day upon which the tragedy was discovered there or whence he had driven them. To be sure they had not behaved like murderers, whereas the evi- dence at the inquest all went to show that the defunct corhueci was little bet ter His reputation, which transpired with his Identity, was that of a libertine and renegade, while the internal ap- paratus upstairs revealed the fendish arts of the anarchist to boot The in- quiry resulted eventually in an open yer dict and was chiefly Instrumental in kill- ing such compassion as is usually felt for the dead who die in their sins. But Rallies would not have passed this title for this tale.