office. The chief saw the force of these considerations; he was
himself an assassin of wide experience. After consulting with the
presiding judge of the Court of Variable Jurisdiction he advised me to
conceal the bodies in one of the bookcases, get a heavy insurance on
the house and burn it down. This I proceeded to do.

In the library was a book-case which my father had recently purchased
of some cranky inventor and had not filled. It was in shape and size
something like the old-fashioned "ward-robes" which one sees in
bed-rooms without closets, but opened all the way down, like a woman's
night-dress. It had glass doors. I had recently laid out my parents
and they were now rigid enough to stand erect; so I stood them in this
book-case, from which I had removed the shelves. I locked them in and
tacked some curtains over the glass doors. The inspector from the
insurance office passed a half-dozen times before the case without
suspicion.

That night, after getting my policy, I set fire to the house and
started through the woods to town, two miles away, where I managed to
be found about the time the excitement was at its height. With cries
of apprehension for the fate of my parents, I joined the rush and
arrived at the fire some two hours after I had kindled it. The whole
town was there as I dashed up. The house was entirely consumed, but
in one end of the level bed of glowing embers, bolt upright and
uninjured, was that book-case! The curtains had burned away, exposing
the glass-doors, through which the fierce, red light illuminated the
interior. There stood my dear father "in his habit as he lived," and
at his side the partner of his joys and sorrows. Not a hair of them
was singed, their clothing was intact. On their heads and throats the
injuries which in the accomplishment of my designs I had been