embers of the police force.

"I watched the ambulances depart with their melancholy burdens and then
turned for information to a bystander. He had not much to give, but the
substance of his account--confirmed later by the newspapers--was this:
The police had located a gang of suspected burglars and three officers
had come to the house to make arrests. They had knocked at the door,
which, after some delay, was opened. Some person within had immediately
shot one of the officers dead and the entire gang of four or five had
rushed out, fired point blank at the other two officers, and then raced
up the street shooting right and left like madmen. Several people had
been wounded and, grievous to relate, the whole gang of miscreants had
made their escape into the surrounding slums.

"I was profoundly interested and even excited for several reasons. In
the first place, here at last was the real Lombroso criminal, the
sub-human mattoid, devoid of intelligence, devoid of the faintest
glimmering of moral sense, fit for nothing but the lethal chamber;
compared with whom the British 'habitual' was a civilized gentleman.
Without a specimen or two of this type, my collection was incomplete.
Then there was the evident applicability of my methods to this class of
offender; methods of quiet extermination without fuss, public disorder
or risk to the precious lives of the police. But beyond these there was
another reason for my interest. The murder of my wife had been a
purposeless, unnecessary crime, committed by some wretch to whom human
life was a thing of no consideration. There was an analogy in the
circumstances that seemed to connect that murder with this type of
miscreant. It was even possible that one of these very villains might be
the one whom I had so patiently sought through the long and weary years.

"The thought fired me with a new enthusiasm. Forthwith I started to
pursue the possible course of the fugitives, threading countless
by-streets and alleys, peering into squalid courts and sending many a
doubtful-looking loiterer shuffling hastily round the nearest corner. Of
course it was fruitless. I had no clue and did not even know the men. I
was merely walking off my own excitement.

"Nevertheless, every night as soon as I had closed my shop, I set forth
on a voyage of exploration, impelled by sheer restlessness; and during
the day I listened eagerly to the talk of my customers in Yiddish--a
language of which I was supposed