devilish
superphysical, in his dilated pupils. What he is anticipating I cannot
say, I dare not think--unless--unless the repetition of a scream; and it
comes--I cannot hear it, but I can feel it, feel the reverberation
through the crime-kissed walls and vicious, tainted atmosphere.

Something is at the door--it presses against it; I can catch a glimpse
of its head, its face; my blood freezes--it is horrible. It enters the
room, grey and silent--it lays one hand on the man's sleeve and drags
him forward. He ascends to the room above, and, with all the brutality
of those accustomed to the dead and dying, drags the---- But I will not
go on. The grey unknown, the occult something, sternly issues its
directions, and the merely physical obeys them. It is all over; the plot
of the vice elementals has triumphed, and as they gleefully step away,
one by one, patting their material comrade on the shoulder, the
darkness, the hellish darkness of that infamous night lightens, and in
through the windows steal the cold grey beams of early morning. I am
assured; I have had enough; I pitch the photograph into the grate. The
evening comes--the evening after the execution. A feeling of the
greatest, the most unenviable curiosity urges me to go, to see if what I
surmise, will actually happen. I leave Gipsy Hill by an early afternoon
train, I spend a few hours at a literary club, I dine at a quiet--an
eminently quiet--restaurant in Oxford Street, and at eleven o'clock I am
standing near a spot which I believe--I have no positive proof--I merely
believe, was frequented by X----. It is more than twelve hours since he
was executed; will anything--will the shape, the personality, I
anticipate--come? The night air grows colder; I shrink deeper and deeper
into the folds of my overcoat, and wish--devoutly wish--myself back
again by my fireside.

The minutes glide by slowly. The streets are very silent now. With the
exception of an occasional toot-toot from a taxi and the shrill whistle
of a goods train, no other sounds are to be heard. It is the hour when
nearly all material London sleeps and the streets are monopolised by
shadows, interspersed with something rather more substantial--namely,
policemen. A few yards away from me there slips by a man in a blue serge
suit; and then, tip-toeing surreptitiously behind him, with one hand in
his trousers-pocket and the other carrying a suspicious-looking black
bag, comes a white-faced young man, dressed