be
certainly discovered. It was now broad daylight and my mother was likely
to enter the library at any moment. Under the circumstances, I thought
it expedient to remove her also, which I did. Then I paid off all the
servants and discharged them.

That afternoon I went to the chief of police, told him what I had done
and asked his advice. It would be very painful to me if the facts became
publicly known. My conduct would be generally condemned; the newspapers
would bring it up against me if ever I should run for office. The chief
saw the force of these considerations; he was himself an assassin of
wide experience. After consulting with the presiding judge of the Court
of Variable Jurisdiction he advised me to conceal the bodies in one of
the bookcases, get a heavy insurance on the house and burn it down. This
I proceeded to do.

In the library was a book-case which my father had recently purchased of
some cranky inventor and had not filled. It was in shape and size
something like the old-fashioned "wardrobes" which one sees in bed-rooms
without closets, but opened all the way down, like a woman's
night-dress. It had glass doors. I had recently laid out my parents and
they were now rigid enough to stand erect; so I stood them in this
book-case, from which I had removed the shelves. I locked them in and
tacked some curtains over the glass doors. The inspector from the
insurance office passed a half-dozen times before the case without
suspicion.

That night, after getting my policy, I set fire to the house and started
through the woods to town, two miles away, where I managed to be found
about the time the excitement was at its height. With cries of
apprehension for the fate of my parents, I joined the rush and arrived
at the fire some two hours after I had kindled it. The whole town was
there as I dashed up. The house was entirely consumed, but in one end of
the level bed of glowing embers, bolt upright and uninjured, was that
book-case! The curtains had burned away, exposing the glass-doors,
through which the fierce, red light illuminated the interior. There
stood my dear father "in his habit as he lived," and at his side the
partner of his joys and sorrows. Not a hair of them was singed, their
clothing was intact. On their heads and throats the injuries which in
the accomplishment of my designs I had been compelled to inflict were
conspicuous. As in the presence of a miracle, the people were silent;
awe and terror h