, but he shrank away in fierce alarm, and after all my eyesight
was not good enough. Once I tried to get out my lens; but he challenged
me furiously as to my object, and I put it away again. I dared not
provoke him to violence, for if he had struck me I should have killed
him on the spot. And he might be the wrong man.

"The operation of shaving him was beset with temptations from moment to
moment. Forgotten anatomical details revived in my memory. I found
myself tracing through the coarse skin those underlying structures that
were so near to hand. Now I was at the angle of the jaw, and as the
ringing blade swept over the skin I traced the edge of the strap-like
muscle and mentally marked the spot where it crossed the great carotid
artery. I could even detect the pulsation of the vessel. How near it was
to the surface! A little dip of the razor's beak at that spot--

"But still I had no clear evidence that he was the right man. A mere
impression--a feeling of physical repulsion unsupported by any tangible
fact--was not enough to act on. One moment a savage impatience for
retribution urged me to take the chance; to fell him with a blow and
fling him down into the cellar. The next, my reason stepped in and bade
me hold my hand and wait for proof. And all the time he watched me like
a cat, and kept his hands thrust into the hip pockets of his coat.

"Again and again these mental oscillations occurred. Now I was simply
and savagely homicidal, and now I was rational--almost judicial. Now the
vital necessity was to prevent his escape; and yet, again, I shrank from
the dreadful risk of killing an innocent man.

"What the issue might have been I cannot say. But suddenly the door
opened, a burly carter entered and sat down, and the opportunity was
gone. The Russian waited for no lengthy inspection in the glass like his
predecessor. As soon as he was finished he sprang from the chair,
slapped down his coppers in payment and darted out of the shop, only too
glad to take himself off in safety. There must have been something very
sinister in my appearance.

"The carter seated himself in the chair and I fell to work on him
mechanically. But my thoughts were with the man who was gone. What a
fiasco it had been! After waiting all these years, I had met a man whom
I suspected to be the very wretch I sought; I had actually been alone
with him--and I had let him go!

"The futility of it! Before my eyes the grinning tenants of the gre