In a recess of the room which I caused Sir Marcus Coverly to visit at the Red House, I placed this duplicate telephone; the false cable communicating with the instrument was attached to a plug in the wall above, but communicated with a gas cylinder in the adjoining room.  In short, what appeared to be cable was in reality tubing and the act of taking the receiver from the hook released through the mouthpiece a sufficient quantity of L.K.  Vapor to have asphyxiated a dozen men.

In order to insure the subject’s receiving the benefit of the whole discharge, I had caused a very heavy curtain to be draped in this recess, which thus became a rough gas-chamber.  Following the first discharge, the subject would fall to the floor and the gas being a heavy one he would there receive his quietus.

The only detail which occasioned much thought was that of the bell by which Sir Marcus should be summoned to this prepared telephone; for it formed no part of the plan for myself to appear anywhere in the neighborhood at the time of the experiment.  I was of course compelled to pay a secret visit to the Red House for the purpose of installing the telephone device, and at the same time I installed the bell.  This was worked from a small storage battery and I arranged that by the opening of the garage door the bell would be put in motion and by the closing of the door at the end of the same building the ringing would cease.

A simple contrivance screwed to both doors made this possible, but I know not by whose hand the ringing would have been accomplished if it had not been for one of those brilliant suggestions of Nahemah’s, which hovered between the domain of genius and that of fiendishness.

She proposed that she should ring up the local police depot and ask the constable on that beat to lock the garage, thus making him the direct instrument for the removal of Sir Marcus!

I knew, since I myself had been a resident in this district, that a constable patrolled College Road at an hour roughly corresponding with that at which it was proposed to cause Sir Marcus to visit the Red House; and because all strategy is based upon the clock, a brief survey of the facts convinced me that Nahemah’s plan was feasible.

Thus, it was Police-Constable Bolton, whose evidence has appeared in the press, who actually killed Sir Marcus Coverly!  I come now to the dangerous attitude adopted by Nahemah immediately after the event.

We had had a case of suitable dimensions made for containing the body, and had had it delivered at the Red House garage, where it was received by a district messenger instructed for the purpose.  Upon me devolved the task of carrying the body from the supper-room to the garage—­a task which I performed shortly after the departure of Police-Constable Bolton.  I packed the body, removed the telephone and also all traces of the bell-device.

The same carter had instructions to call for the case in the morning, and the garage door was left open to enable him to collect it.  In short, except for these two essential visits, one before and one after the experiment, there was no occasion for myself or Nahemah to appear in the neighborhood of the Red House.