THE STRANGE By H. Gerald CASE Chap1n. OF DR. CREAM.
A DECADE ago, there was arraigned be fore an English judge and jury, one whose character must ever present to crim inologists an enigma well nigh hopeless of solution. Imagine a being utterly devoid of sympathy, a moral and spiritual imbecile, whose sole delight is in witnessing the suf fering of others — who murders by a slow and painful process human beings whom he does not even know, not for the sake of any benefit to be obtained, not for revenge, but prompted solely by a fiendish gloating over another's agony. Even in fiction, the hideous Frankenstein or the yet more terrible Hyde, types of all that is repellant to our nature, possessed some softened moments when we might pity. But this being, more weird and terrible than the wildest creation of a Shelley, a Stevenson or a Poe, was so entirely com pounded of all evil that we can only shudder at nature's frightful handiwork. After all the author's researches into the dark realm of crime he has yet to find a case which even approximates to the present. Several years before this story opens, the gates of a Canadian prison vomited forth one Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, who had served a nine years' sentence for the most atrocious murder of a patient. This crime in itself presents nothing novel either in de sign or execution. The physician had pre scribed a harmless powder. A substitution of strychnine was easily accomplished. The true cause of death was unsuspected and detection might never have resulted had it not been that the homicide sought to utilize his crime as a means of extorting blackmail. The druggist was notified that he had made an error in the prescription and a large sum asked as the price of silence.
Knowing full well that his innocence might be easily established, for it was shown that at the time in question there was no poison kept on hand in his shop, the latter refused to accede to the demand. Cream there upon laid before the Coroner a statement of his charges. He had, however, played his cards so badly that although the body was exhumed and traces of strychnine found in the stomach, suspicion fell upon the accuser himself and a subsequent trial ended in his conviction. Upon his release from jail he practised for some time among fallen women in Canada and in the United States, and finally in October, 1891, left for England. Soon after his arrival, all London was startled by a series of the most atrocious and apparently motiveless crimes. Ellen Donworth, a woman of the unfortunate class, fell down in the street writhing in convul sions. She was taken to St. Thomas's Hos pital, but died on the way. A careful ex amination of the contents of the stomach revealed traces of strychnine and morphia. In the same month, there were living at the Orient buildings facing into the Hercules Road, two women by the names of Elizabeth Masters and Elizabeth May. At the Ludgate Circus one stormy evening, the former became acquainted with a man of medium height, big head and broad shoulders, with a reddish beard and bushy eyebrows. A cast in the eye gave him a somewhat sinister ap pearance. His expression was a forbidding one and an almost continual frown had worn a delta-shaped hollow over the nose. Once seen, his face was not likely to be forgotten. In age, he appeared slightly over forty. An acquaintance was quickly formed and several music halls visited. He received an invita
