ss foreign to my nature.

Once, I believe, I had been able to play an active part among the men
who were my associates in that adventurous life that lay so far behind
me. But eight years of clerkship had reduced me to the condition of
one who waits on the command of others. Now my irresolution vanished
for the time, and I was my old self once more.

The first task was the disposal of the body in such a way that
suspicion would not attach itself to me after I had vacated the rooms
next morning.

There was a fire-escape running up to the floor of that room on the
outside of the house, though there was no egress to it. It had been
put up by the landlord to satisfy the requirements of some new law; but
had never been meant for use, and it was constructed of the flimsiest
and cheapest ironwork. I saw that it would be possible by standing on
a chair to swing myself up to the hole in the wall and reach down to
the iron stairs up which, I assumed, the dead man had crept after I had
given him the hint of Jacqueline's abode by emerging from the front
door.

I raised the dead man in my arms, looking apprehensively toward the
bed. I was afraid Jacqueline would awaken, but she slept in heavy
peace, undisturbed by the harsh creaking of the sagging floor beneath
its double burden. I put the fur cap on the grotesque, nodding dead
head, and, pushing a chair toward the wall with my foot, mounted it and
managed with a great effort to squeeze through the hole, pulling up the
body with me as I did so.

Then I felt with my foot for the little platform at the top of the iron
stairs outside, found it, and dropped. Afterward I dragged the
dreadful burden down from the hole.

I had not known that I was strong before, and I do not understand now
how I managed to accomplish my wretched task.

I carried the dead man all the way down the fire-escape, clinging and
straining against the rotting, rusting bars, which bent and cracked
beneath my weight and seemed about to break and drag down the entire
structure from the wall.

I hardly paused at the platforms outside the successive stories. The
weather was growing very cold, a storm was coming up, and the wind
soughed and whined dismally around the eaves.

I reached the bottom at last and rested for a moment.

At the back of the house was a little vacant space, filled with heaps
of debris from the demolished portions of the building and with refuse
which had been dumped there by ten