scovered that I had been shaved perfectly clean, as with a Heat Razor.
The truth rushed upon me: I had come within the range of the
Mash-Glance, and had been saved from total dissolution only by
intervening masonry protecting my face and body.

To leave the Hill was the work of an instant. I passed through John
Street to Hampstead Road, along Belsize Avenue and Buckland Crescent to
Belsize Road, and so to Canterbury Road and Kilburn Lane. Here I met a
fourth newspaper boy loaded with copies of the _St. James' Gazette_. He
offered me one for seven-and-sixpence, or two for half a sovereign, but
it seemed to me I had read enough.

Turning into Ladbroke Grove Road I quickly reached Notting Hill, and
stealthily entered my house in Campden Hill Gardens ten minutes later.

BOOK II.

London under the Wenuses.

I.

THE DEATH OF THE EXAMINER.

My first act on entering my house, in order to guard against any sudden
irruption on the part of my wife, was to bolt the door and put on the
chain. My next was to visit the pantry, the cellar, and the larder, but
they were all void of food and drink. My wife must have been there
first. As I had drunk nothing since I burgled the Kennington chemist's,
I was very thirsty, though my mind was still hydrostatic. I cannot
account for it on scientific principles, but I felt very angry with my
wife. Suddenly I was struck by a happy thought, and hurrying upstairs I
found a bottle of methylated spirits on my wife's toilet-table. Strange
as it may seem to the sober reader, I drank greedily of the unfamiliar
beverage, and feeling refreshed and thoroughly kinetic, settled down
once more to an exhaustive exposure of the dishonest off-handedness of
the external Examiners at University College. I may add that I had taken
the bread-knife (by Mappin) from the pantry, as it promised to be useful
in the case of unforeseen Clerical emergencies. I should have preferred
the meat-chopper with which the curate had been despatched in _The War
of the Worlds,_ but it was deposited in the South Kensington Museum
along with other mementoes of the Martian invasion. Besides, my wife and
I had both become Wegetarians.

The evening was still, and though distracted at times by recollections
of the Wenuses, I made good progress with my indictment. Suddenly I was
conscious of a pale pink glow which suffused my writing-pad, and I heard
a soft but unmistakable thud as of a pinguid body falling in the
immedi