ct. He showed it to me himself. It was given to him by the
'Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society' to carry his tools in. Ha! Ha! O
Lord!'

"The sergeant examined the bag with an appreciative grin, which
broadened as his colleague lifted out a brace, a pad of bits, a folding
jimmy and a few other trifles. I made a mental note of the burglar's
name, and then my interest languished again. The two officers looked
over the room together, tried the museum door and noted that it had not
been tampered with; turned over the plate and admonished me on the folly
of leaving it so accessible; and finally departed with the promise to
bring a detective-inspector in the morning, and meanwhile to leave a
constable to guard the house.

"I would gladly have dispensed with that constable, especially as he
settled himself in the dining-room and seemed disposed to converse,
which I was not. His presence shut me off from the museum. I could not
open the door, for the burglar was lying just inside. It was extremely
annoying. I wanted to make sure that the man was really dead, and,
especially, I wanted to examine his hair and to compare his
finger-prints with the set that I had in the museum. However, it could
not be helped. Eventually I took my candle-lamp from the sideboard and
went up to bed, leaving the constable seated in the easy-chair with a
box of cigars, a decanter of whiskey and a siphon of Apollinaris at his
elbow.

"I remained awake a long time cogitating on the situation. Was the man
whom I had captured the right man? Had I accomplished my task, and was I
now at liberty to 'determine,' as the lawyers say, the lease of my
ruined life? That was a question which the morning light would answer;
and meanwhile one thing was clear: I had fairly committed myself to the
disposal of the dead burglar. I could not produce the body now; I should
have to get rid of it as best I could.

"Of course, the problem presented no difficulty. There was a fire-clay
furnace in the laboratory in which I had been accustomed to consume the
bulky refuse of my preparations. A hundredweight or so of anthracite
would turn the body into undistinguishable ash; and yet--well, it seemed
a wasteful thing to do. I have always been rather opposed to cremation,
to the wanton destruction of valuable anatomical material. And now I was
actually proposing, myself, to practice that which I had so strongly
deprecated. I reflected. Here was a specimen delivered at my very door