o his feet.

"I don't want your dirty money, blast you," exclaimed Harvey, without
thinking. "Good-by, Nellie. Be good to Phoebe. Tell 'em out in
Blakeville that I--oh, tell 'em anything you like. I don't give a
rap!"

He turned and went shambling down the hall, his back very stiff, his
ears very red.

It was necessary to step over Rachel's prostrate form. He got one foot
across, when she, crazed with fear, emitted a piercing shriek and
arose so abruptly that he was caught unawares. What with the start the
shriek gave him and the uprising of a supposedly inanimate mass, his
personal equilibrium was put to the severest test. Indeed, he quite
lost it, going first into the air with all the sprawl of a bronco
buster, and then landing solidly on his left ear where there wasn't a
shred of rug to ease the impact. In a twinkling, however, he was on
his feet, apologising to Rachel. But she was crawling away as fast as
her hands and knees would carry her. From the dining-room came
violent shouts, the hated word "police" dominating the clamour.

He slid through the door and closed it after him. A moment later he
was plunging down the steps, disdaining the elevator, which, however
fast it may have been, could not have been swift enough for him in his
present mood. The police! They would be clanging up to the building in
a jiffy, and then what? To the station house!

Half-way down he paused to reflect. Voices above came howling down the
shaft, urging the elevator man to stop him, to hold him, to do all
manner of things to him. He felt himself trapped.

So he sat down on an upper step, leaned back against the marble wall,
closed his eyes tightly, and jammed the muzzle of the revolver against
the pit of his stomach.

"I hate to do it," he groaned, and then pulled the trigger.

The hammer fell with a sharp click. He opened his eyes. If it didn't
hurt any more than that he could do it with them open. Why not? In a
frenzy to have it over with he pulled again and was gratified to find
that the second bullet was not a whit more painful than the first.
Then he thought of the ugly spectacle he would present if he confined
the mutilation to the abdominal region. People would shudder and say,
"how horrible he looks!" So he considerately aimed the third one at
his right eye.

Even as he pulled the trigger, and the hammer fell with the usual
click, his vision centred on the black little hole in the end of the
barrel. Breathlessly he