d with
him on the careless manner he treated his body, and he laughed in his
good-humored, gentle way, and promised to obey me in all things. And he
did. That Mrs. Drabdump, failing to rouse him, would cry 'Murder!' I
took for certain. She is built that way. As even Sir Charles
Brown-Harland remarked, she habitually takes her prepossessions for
facts, her inferences for observations. She forecasts the future in
gray. Most women of Mrs. Drabdump's class would have behaved as she did.
She happened to be a peculiarly favorable specimen for working on by
'suggestion,' but I would have undertaken to produce the same effect on
almost any woman under similar conditions. The only uncertain link in
the chain was: Would Mrs. Drabdump rush across to get me to break open
the door? Women always rush for a man. I was well-nigh the nearest, and
certainly the most authoritative man in the street, and I took it for
granted she would."

"But suppose she hadn't?" the Home Secretary could not help asking.

"Then the murder wouldn't have happened, that's all. In due course
Arthur Constant would have awoke, or somebody else breaking open the
door would have found him sleeping; no harm done, nobody any the wiser.
I could hardly sleep myself that night. The thought of the extraordinary
crime I was about to commit--a burning curiosity to know whether Wimp
would detect the _modus operandi_--the prospect of sharing the feelings
of murderers with whom I had been in contact all my life without being
in touch with the terrible joys of their inner life--the fear lest I
should be too fast asleep to hear Mrs. Drabdump's knock--these things
agitated me and disturbed my rest. I lay tossing on my bed, planning
every detail of poor Constant's end. The hours dragged slowly and
wretchedly on toward the misty dawn. I was racked with suspense. Was I
to be disappointed after all? At last the welcome sound came--the
rat-tat-tat of murder. The echoes of that knock are yet in my ear. 'Come
over and kill him!' I put my night-capped head out of the window and
told her to wait for me. I dressed hurriedly, took my razor, and went
across to 11 Glover Street. As I broke open the door of the bedroom in
which Arthur Constant lay sleeping, his head resting on his hands, I
cried, 'My God!' as if I saw some awful vision. A mist as of blood
swam before Mrs. Drabdump's eyes. She cowered back, for an instant
(I divined rather than saw the action) she shut off the dreaded
sigh