e
he has taught you. Nothing will induce me to stir a step to help you.
You have come to the wrong man. Go to some of your friends. Don't
come to me."

"Alan, it was murder. I killed him. You don't know what he had made
me suffer. Whatever my life is, he had more to do with the making or
the marring of it than poor Harry has had. He may not have intended
it, the result was the same."

"Murder! Good God, Dorian, is that what you have come to? I shall not
inform upon you. It is not my business. Besides, without my stirring
in the matter, you are certain to be arrested. Nobody ever commits a
crime without doing something stupid. But I will have nothing to do
with it."

"You must have something to do with it. Wait, wait a moment; listen to
me. Only listen, Alan. All I ask of you is to perform a certain
scientific experiment. You go to hospitals and dead-houses, and the
horrors that you do there don't affect you. If in some hideous
dissecting-room or fetid laboratory you found this man lying on a
leaden table with red gutters scooped out in it for the blood to flow
through, you would simply look upon him as an admirable subject. You
would not turn a hair. You would not believe that you were doing
anything wrong. On the contrary, you would probably feel that you were
benefiting the human race, or increasing the sum of knowledge in the
world, or gratifying intellectual curiosity, or something of that kind.
What I want you to do is merely what you have often done before.
Indeed, to destroy a body must be far less horrible than what you are
accustomed to work at. And, remember, it is the only piece of evidence
against me. If it is discovered, I am lost; and it is sure to be
discovered unless you help me."

"I have no desire to help you. You forget that. I am simply
indifferent to the whole thing. It has nothing to do with me."

"Alan, I entreat you. Think of the position I am in. Just before you
came I almost fainted with terror. You may know terror yourself some
day. No! don't think of that. Look at the matter purely from the
scientific point of view. You don't inquire where the dead things on
which you experiment come from. Don't inquire now. I have told you
too much as it is. But I beg of you to do this. We were friends once,
Alan."

"Don't speak about those days, Dorian--they are dead."

"The dead linger sometimes. The man upstairs will not go away. He is
sitting at the table w