hat haven of safety
and apparent innocence--his bed. One visitor had come: at any moment
another might follow and be more obstinate. To have done the deed, and
yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent a failure. The money,
that was now Markheim's concern; and as a means to that, the keys.

He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was still
lingering and shivering; and with no conscious repugnance of the mind,
yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of his victim. The
human character had quite departed. Like a suit half-stuffed with bran,
the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on the floor; and yet the
thing repelled him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, he
feared it might have more significance to the touch. He took the body by
the shoulders, and turned it on its back. It was strangely light and
supple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the oddest
postures. The face was robbed of all expression; but it was as pale as
wax, and shockingly smeared with blood about one temple. That was, for
Markheim, the one displeasing circumstance. It carried him back, upon
the instant, to a certain fair-day in a fishers' village: a gray day, a
piping wind, a crowd upon the street, the blare of brasses, the booming
of drums, the nasal voice of a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro,
buried over head in the crowd and divided between interest and fear,
until, coming out upon the chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth
and a great screen with pictures, dismally designed, garishly coloured:
Brown-rigg with her apprentice; the Mannings with their murdered guest;
Weare in the death-grip of Thurtell; and a score besides of famous
crimes. The thing was as clear as an illusion; he was once again that
little boy; he was looking once again, and with the same sense of
physical revolt, at these vile pictures; he was still stunned by the
thumping of the drums. A bar of that day's music returned upon his
memory; and at that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a breath
of nausea, a sudden weakness of the joints, which he must instantly
resist and conquer.

He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from these
considerations; looking the more hardily in the dead face, bending his
mind to realise the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a while
ago that face had moved with every change of sentiment, that pale mouth
had spok