That afternoon I went to the chief of police, told him what I had done and asked his advice.  It would be very painful to me if the facts became publicly known.  My conduct would be generally condemned; the newspapers would bring it up against me if ever I should run for 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 “wardrobes” 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 compelled to inflict were conspicuous.  As in the presence of a miracle, the people were silent; awe and terror had stilled every tongue.  I was myself greatly affected.

Some three years later, when the events herein related had nearly faded from my memory, I went to New York to assist in passing some counterfeit United States bonds.  Carelessly looking into a furniture store one day, I saw the exact counterpart of that bookcase.  “I bought it for a trifle from a reformed inventor,” the dealer explained.  “He said it was fireproof, the pores of the wood being filled with alum under hydraulic pressure and the glass made of asbestos.  I don’t suppose it is really fireproof—­you can have it at the price of an ordinary book-case.”

“No,” I said, “if you cannot warrant it fireproof I won’t take it”—­and I bade him good morning.