d on Dorian. He kept his hands in the
pockets of his Astrakhan coat, and seemed not to have noticed the
gesture with which he had been greeted.

"Yes: it is a matter of life and death, Alan, and to more than one
person. Sit down."

Campbell took a chair by the table, and Dorian sat opposite to him. The
two men's eyes met. In Dorian's there was infinite pity. He knew that
what he was going to do was dreadful.

After a strained moment of silence, he leaned across and said, very
quietly, but watching the effect of each word upon the face of him he
had sent for, "Alan, in a locked room at the top of this house, a room
to which nobody but myself has access, a dead man is seated at a table.
He has been dead ten hours now. Don't stir, and don't look at me like
that. Who the man is, why he died, how he died, are matters that do not
concern you. What you have to do is this----"

"Stop, Gray. I don't want to know anything further. Whether what you
have told me is true or not true, doesn't concern me. I entirely decline
to be mixed up in your life. Keep your horrible secrets to yourself.
They don't interest me any more."

"Alan, they will have to interest you. This one will have to interest
you. I am awfully sorry for you, Alan. But I can't help myself. You are
the one man who is able to save me. I am forced to bring you into the
matter. I have no option. Alan, you are scientific. You know about
chemistry, and things of that kind. You have made experiments. What you
have got to do is to destroy the thing that is upstairs--to destroy it
so that not a vestige of it will be left. Nobody saw this person come
into the house. Indeed, at the present moment he is supposed to be in
Paris. He will not be missed for months. When he is missed, there must
be no trace of him found here. You, Alan, you must change him, and
everything that belongs to him, into a handful of ashes that I may
scatter in the air."

"You are mad, Dorian."

"Ah! I was waiting for you to call me Dorian."

"You are mad, I tell you--mad to imagine that I would raise a finger to
help you, mad to make this monstrous confession. I will have nothing to
do with this matter, whatever it is. Do you think I am going to peril my
reputation for you? What is it to me what devil's work you are up to?"

"It was suicide, Alan."

"I am glad of that. But who drove him to it? You, I should fancy."

"Do you still refuse to do this for me?"

"Of course I refuse. I will have a