ting that his somewhat singular appearance might have accounted
for the scrutiny, his suspicions were roused; he feared, albeit
wrongly, that he was followed, for the stranger had come up soon after
him. Assuming an air of indifference, he strolled about until he was
very near the stranger, and then with the swiftness and ferocity of a
tiger he sprang and slipped a knife-blade between the man's ribs. The
stranger sank with a groan, and the Malay fled down the hill.

It was a curious circumstance that the man fell in front of one of the
openings which neglect had permitted the rains to wash underneath the
parapet. He floundered as some dying men will, and these movements
caused him to work his body through the opening. That done, he started
rolling down the steep eastern declivity, the speed of his flight
increasing with every bound. Many cottages are perched precariously on
this precipitous slope. Mrs. Armour, a resident of one of them, was
sitting in a rear room near the window, sewing, when she was amazed to
see a man flying through the sash close beside her. He came with so
great violence that he tore through a thin partition into an adjoining
room and landed in a shapeless heap against the opposite wall. Mrs.
Armour screamed for help. A great commotion ensued, but it was some
time before the flight of the body was connected with a murder on the
parapet. Nevertheless, the police were active, and presently a dozen of
them were upon the broad trail which the murderer had left in his
flight down the hill.

In a short time the Malay found himself in the lumber-piles of the
northern water-front. Thence, after gathering himself together, he
walked leisurely westward in the rear of the wire-works, and traversed
a little sand-beach where mothers and nurses had children out for an
airing. The desperate spirit of perversity which possessed the man (and
which Rabaya afterwards explained by the possession of the amulet),
made reckless by a belief that the charm which he carried would
preserve him from all menaces, led him to steal a small hand-satchel
that lay on the beach near a well-dressed woman. He walked away with
it, and then opened it and was rejoiced to find that it contained some
money and fine jewelry. At this juncture one of the children, who had
observed the Malay's theft, called the woman's attention to him. She
started in pursuit, raising a loud outcry, which emptied the adjacent
drinking-saloons of a pursuing cro