I pulled aside the curtains and stood between them, and the scene stamped itself upon my brain, as clear as a photographic print, for ever.

The woolly beast was the fur cap of a dead man who lay across the floor of the little room. One foot was extended underneath the bed, and the head reached to the bottom of the wall on the other side of the room.

He lay upon his back, his eyes open and staring, his hands clenched, and his features twisted into a sneering smile.

His fur overcoat, unbuttoned, disclosed a warm knit waistcoat of a gaudy pattern, across which ran the heavy links of a gold chain. There was a tiny hole in his breast, over the heart, from which a little blood had flowed. The wound had pierced the heart, and death had evidently been instantaneous.

It was the man whom I had seen staring at us across Herald Square.

Beside the window Jacqueline crouched, and at her feet lay the Eskimo dog, watching me silently. In her hand she held a tiny, dagger-like knife, with a thin, red-stained blade. Her grey eyes, black in the gas-light, stared into mine, and there was neither fear nor recognition in them. She was fully dressed, and the bed had not been occupied.

I flung myself at her feet. I took the weapon from her hand.

"Jacqueline!" I cried in terror. I raised her hands to my lips and caressed them.

She seemed quite unresponsive.

I laid them against my cheek. I called her by her name imploringly; I spoke to her, but she only looked at me and made no answer. Still it was evident to me that she heard and understood, for she looked at me in a puzzled way, as if I were a complete stranger. She did not seem to resent my presence there, and she did not seem afraid of the dead man. She seemed, in a kindly, patient manner, to be trying to understand the meaning of the situation.

"Jacqueline," I cried, "you are not hurt? Thank God you are not hurt.

What has happened?"

"I don't know," she answered. "I don't know where I am."

I kneeled down at her side and put my arms about her.

"Jacqueline, dear;" I said, "will you not try to think? I am Paul--your friend Paul. Do you not remember me?"

"No, monsieur," she sighed.

"But, then, how did you come here, Jacqueline?" I asked.

"I do not know," she answered. And, a moment later, "I do not know, Paul."

That encouraged me a little. Evidently she remembered what I had just said to her.

"Where is your home, Jacqueline?"

"I do not know," she answered in an apathetic voice, devoid of interest.

There was something more to be said, though it was hard.

"Jacqueline, who--was--that?"

"Who?" she inquired, looking at me with the same patient, wistful gaze.

"That man, Jacqueline. That dead man."

"What dead man, Paul?"

She was staring straight at the body, and at that moment I realized that she not only did not remember, but did not even see it.

The shock which she had received, supervening upon the nervous state in which she had been when I encountered her, had produced one of those mental inhibitions in which the mind, to save the reason, obliterates temporarily not only all memory of the past, but also all present sights and sounds which may serve to recall it. She looked idly at the body of the dead man, and I was sure that she saw nothing but the worn woodwork of the floor.

I saw that it was useless to say anything more upon this subject.

"You are very tired, Jacqueline?" I asked.

"Yes, _monsieur_," she answered, leaning back against my arm.

"And you would like to sleep?"

"Yes, _monsieur_."

I raised her in my arms and laid her on the bed, telling her to close her eyes and sleep. She was asleep almost immediately after her head rested Upon the pillow. She breathed as softly as an infant.

I watched her for a while until I heard a distant clock strike three.

This recalled me to the dangers of our situation. I struck a match and lit the gas in the bedroom. But the yellow glare was so ghastly and intolerable that I turned it down.

And then I set about the task before me.

CHAPTER III

COVERING THE TRACKS

I thought quickly, and my consciousness seemed to embrace all the details of the situation with a keenness foreign to my nature.

Once, I believe, I had been able to play an active part among the men who were my associates in that adventurous life that lay so far behind me. But eight years of clerkship had reduced me to the condition of one who waits on the command of others. Now my irresolution vanished for the time, and I was my old self once more.

The first task was the disposal of the body in such a way that suspicion would not attach itself to me after I had vacated the rooms next morning.

There was a fire-escape running up to the floor of that room on the outside of the house, though there was no egress to it. It had been put up by the landlord to satisfy the requirements of some new law; but had never been meant for use, and it was constructed of the flimsiest and cheapest ironwork. I saw that it would be possible by standing on a chair to swing myself up to the hole in the wall and reach down to the iron stairs up which, I assumed, the dead man had crept after I had given him the hint of Jacqueline's abode by emerging from the front door.

I raised the dead man in my arms, looking apprehensively toward the bed. I was afraid Jacqueline would awaken, but she slept in heavy peace, undisturbed by the harsh creaking of the sagging floor beneath its double burden. I put the fur cap on the grotesque, nodding dead head, and, pushing a chair toward the wall with my foot, mounted it and managed with a great effort to squeeze through the hole, pulling up the body with me as I did so.

Then I felt with my foot for the little platform at the top of the iron stairs outside, found it, and dropped. Afterward I dragged the dreadful burden down from the hole.

I had not known that I was strong before, and I do not understand now how I managed to accomplish my wretched task.

I carried the dead man all the way down the fire-escape, clinging and straining against the rotting, rusting bars, which bent and cracked beneath my weight and seemed about to break and drag down the entire structure from the wall.

I hardly paused at the platforms outside the successive stories. The weather was growing very cold, a storm was coming up, and the wind soughed and whined dismally around the eaves.

I reached the bottom at last and rested for a moment.

At the back of the house was a little vacant space, filled with heaps of debris from the demolished portions of the building and with refuse which had been dumped there by tenants who had left and had never been removed. This yard was separated only by a rotting fence with a single wooden rail from a small blind alley.