ds
fell on my library hearth with no one near and no sign by which
to associate me with the act. Does this seem like the assertion
of a madman? Go to the old chamber familiarly called "The Colonel's
Own." Enter its closet, pull out its two drawers, and in the
opening thus made seek for the loophole at the back, through which,
if you stoop low enough, you can catch a glimpse of the library
hearth and its great settle. With these in view, slip your finger
along the wall on your right and when it touches an obstruction--pass
it if it is a handle, for that is only used to rewind the
apparatus and must be turned from you until it can be turned no
farther; but if it is a depression you encounter, press, and press
hard on the knob concealed within it. But beware when any one you
love is seated in that corner of the settle where the cushion
invites rest, lest it be your fate to mourn and wail as it is mine
to curse the hour when I sought to clear my way by murder. For
the doom of the man of blood is upon me. The hindrance is gone
from my life, but a horror has entered it beyond the conception
of any soul that has not yielded itself to the unimaginable
influences emanating from an accomplished crime. I can not be
content with having pressed that spring once. A mania is upon me
which, after thirty years of useless resistance and superhuman
struggle, still draws me from bed and sleep to rehearse in ghastly
fashion that deed of my early manhood. I can not resist it. To
tear out the deadly mechanism, unhinge weight and drum and rid the
house of every evidence of crime would but drive me to shriek my
guilt aloud and act in open pantomime what I now go through in
fearsome silence and secrecy. When the hour comes, as come it
must, that I can not rise and enter that fatal closet, I shall
still enact the deed in dreams, and shriek aloud in my sleep and
wish myself dead and yet fear to die lest my hell be to go through
all eternity, slaying over and over my man, in ever growing horror
and repulsion.

"Do you wish to share my fate? Try to effect through blood a
release from the difficulties menacing you."

XXII

A THREAD IN HAND

There are moments which stand out with intense force and clearness
in every man's life. Mine was the one which followed the reading
of these lines which were meant for a warning, but which in
more than one case had manifestly served to open the way to a
repetition of the very crime th