Once more I ventured: 

“Jacqueline!  Jacqueline!”

There was not the smallest answering stir within.  And so, with shaking fingers, I turned the key.

The door creaked open with a noise that must have sounded throughout the empty house.  I recollected then that it was impossible to keep it shut without locking it.  The landlord had long ago ceased to concern himself with his tumble-down property.

I caught at the door-edge, missed it and, tripping over a rent in the cheap mat that lay against the door inside, stumbled against the table-edge and clung there.

And even after I had caught at it, and stayed my fall, that infernal door went creaking, creaking backward till it brought up against the wall.

The room was completely dark, except for a little patch of light high up on the bedroom wall, which came through the hole the workmen had made when they began demolishing the building.  I hesitated a moment; then I drew a match from my pocket and rubbed it softly into a flame against my trouser leg.

I reached up to the gas above the table, turned it on, and lit the incandescent mantle, lowering the light immediately.  But even then there was no sound from behind the curtains.

They hung down close together, so that I was able to see only the gas-blackened ceiling above them and, underneath, the lower edge of the bed linen, and the bed-frame at the base, with its enamelled iron feet, The sheets hung straight, as though the bed had not been occupied; but, though there was no sound, I knew Jacqueline was at the back of the curtains.

The oppressive stillness was not that of solitude.  She must be awake; she must be listening in terror.

I went toward the curtains, and when I spoke I heard the words come through my lips in a voice that I could not recognize as mine.

“Jacqueline!” I whispered, “it is Paul.  Paul, your friend.  Are you safe, Jacqueline?”

Now I saw, under the curtains, what looked like the body of a very small animal.  It might have been a woolly dog, or a black lambkin, and it was lying perfectly still.

I pulled aside the curtains and stood between them, and the scene stamped itself upon my brain, as clear as a photographic print, for ever.

The woolly beast was the fur cap of a dead man who lay across the floor of the little room.  One foot was extended underneath the bed, and the head reached to the bottom of the wall on the other side of the room.  He lay upon his back, his eyes open and staring, his hands clenched, and his features twisted into a sneering smile.

His fur overcoat, unbuttoned, disclosed a warm knit waistcoat of a gaudy pattern, across which ran the heavy links of a gold chain.  There was a tiny hole in his breast, over the heart, from which a little blood had flowed.  The wound had pierced the heart, and death had evidently been instantaneous.