[Illustration:  Burleigh, with A feeling of nausea, drew back toward the DOOOR.]

He stood at the head of the stairs trying to recover himself; trying to think.  The gas on the landing below, the stairs and the furniture, all looked so prosaic and familiar that he could not realize what had occurred.  He walked slowly down and turned the light out.  The darkness of the upper part of the house was now almost appalling, and in a sudden panic he ran down stairs into the lighted hall, and snatching a hat from the stand, went to the door and walked down to the gate.

Except for one window the neighbouring houses were in darkness, and the lamps shone tip a silent street.  There was a little rain in the air, and the muddy road was full of pebbles.  He stood at the gate trying to screw up his courage to enter the house again.  Then he noticed a figure coming slowly up the road and keeping close to the palings.

The full realization of what he had done broke in upon him when he found himself turning to fly from the approach of the constable.  The wet cape glistening in the lamplight, the slow, heavy step, made him tremble.  Suppose the thing upstairs was not quite dead and should cry out?  Suppose the constable should think it strange for him to be standing there and follow him in?  He assumed a careless attitude, which did not feel careless, and as the man passed bade him good-night, and made a remark as to the weather.

Ere the sound of the other’s footsteps had gone quite out of hearing, he turned and entered the house again before the sense of companionship should have quite departed.  The first flight of stairs was lighted by the gas in the hall, and he went up slowly.  Then he struck a match and went up steadily, past the library door, and with firm fingers turned on the gas in his bedroom and lit it.  He opened the window a little way, and sitting down on his bed, tried to think.

He had got eight hours.  Eight hours and two hundred pounds in small notes.  He opened his safe and took out all the loose cash it contained, and walking about the room, gathered up and placed in his pockets such articles of jewellery as he possessed.

The first horror had now to some extent passed, and was succeeded by the fear of death.

With this fear on him he sat down again and tried to think out the first moves in that game of skill of which his life was the stake.  He had often read of people of hasty temper, evading the police for a time, and eventually falling into their hands for lack of the most elementary common sense.  He had heard it said that they always made some stupid blunder, left behind them some damning clue.  He took his revolver from a drawer and saw that it was loaded.  If the worst came to the worst, he would die quickly.

Eight hours’ start; two hundred odd pounds.  He would take lodgings at first in some populous district, and let the hair on his face grow.  When the hue-and-cry had ceased, he would go abroad and start life again.  He would go out of a night and post letters to himself, or better still, postcards, which his landlady would read.  Postcards from cheery friends, from a sister, from a brother.  During the day he would stay in and write, as became a man who described himself as a journalist.