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