planning their exploits as well as in the execution of them.
They were intelligent, secret, sure. And in every case they
accomplished their work and escaped detection."

"You must not forget, however," complained Pendleton, "that De
Quincey's assassin, John Williams, was a real person, and his killings
actual occurrences. Poe's workmen were creatures of his imagination,
their crimes, with the possible exception of 'Marie Roget,' were
purely fanciful. The creator of the doer and the deed had a clear
field; and in that, perhaps, lies the superiority of Poe."

Ashton-Kirk sighed humorously.

"Perhaps," said he. "At any rate the select crimes are usually the
conceptions of men who have no idea of putting them into execution.
And that, upon consideration, is a fortunate thing for society. But,
at the same time, it is most irritating to a man of a speculative turn
of mind. Fiction teems with most splendid murders. Captain Marryat, in
Snarleyow, created an almost perfect horror in the attempted slaughter
of the boy Smallbones by the hag mother of Vanslyperken; the lad's
reversal of the situation and his plunging a bayonet into the wrinkled
throat, makes the chapter an accomplishment difficult to displace.
Remember it?"

Pendleton arose and opened one of the windows.

"Even the noise and smell of this street of yours are grateful after
what I have been listening to," said he. Then, after a moment spent in
examining the adjacent outdoors, he added in a tone of wonderment. "I
say, Kirk, this is really a hole of a place to live! Why don't you
move?"

The other arose and joined him at the window. Old-fashioned streets
alter wonderfully after the generations of the elect have passed; but
when Eastern Europe takes to dumping its furtive hordes into one, the
change is marked indeed. In this one peddler's wagons replaced the
shining carriages of a former day--wagons drawn by large-jointed
horses and driven by bearded men who cried their wares in strange,
throaty voices.

Everything exhaled a thick, semi-oriental smell. Dully painted
fire-escapes clung hideously to the fronts of the buildings;
stagnant-looking men, wearing their hats, leaned from bedroom windows.
The once decent hallways were smutted with grimy hands; the wide
marble steps were huddled with alien, unclean people.

A splendidly spired church stood almost shoulder to shoulder with the
Ashton-Kirk house. Once it had been a place of dignified Episcopal
worship; b