Jacqueline of Golden River | Page 8

saw that it was useless to say anything more upon this subject.
"You are very tired, Jacqueline?" I asked.
"Yes, monsieur," she answered, leaning back against my arm.
"And you would like to sleep?"
"Yes, monsieur."
I raised her in my arms and laid her on the bed, telling her to close her
eyes and sleep. She was asleep almost immediately after her head
rested Upon the pillow. She breathed as softly as an infant.
I watched her for a while until I heard a distant clock strike three. This
recalled me to the dangers of our situation. I struck a match and lit the

gas in the bedroom. But the yellow glare was so ghastly and intolerable
that I turned it down.
And then I set about the task before me.
CHAPTER III
COVERING THE TRACKS
I thought quickly, and my consciousness seemed to embrace all the
details of the situation with a keenness foreign to my nature.
Once, I believe, I had been able to play an active part among the men
who were my associates in that adventurous life that lay so far behind
me. But eight years of clerkship had reduced me to the condition of one
who waits on the command of others. Now my irresolution vanished
for the time, and I was my old self once more.
The first task was the disposal of the body in such a way that suspicion
would not attach itself to me after I had vacated the rooms next
morning.
There was a fire-escape running up to the floor of that room on the
outside of the house, though there was no egress to it. It had been put
up by the landlord to satisfy the requirements of some new law; but had
never been meant for use, and it was constructed of the flimsiest and
cheapest ironwork. I saw that it would be possible by standing on a
chair to swing myself up to the hole in the wall and reach down to the
iron stairs up which, I assumed, the dead man had crept after I had
given him the hint of Jacqueline's abode by emerging from the front
door.
I raised the dead man in my arms, looking apprehensively toward the
bed. I was afraid Jacqueline would awaken, but she slept in heavy
peace, undisturbed by the harsh creaking of the sagging floor beneath
its double burden. I put the fur cap on the grotesque, nodding dead head,
and, pushing a chair toward the wall with my foot, mounted it and
managed with a great effort to squeeze through the hole, pulling up the

body with me as I did so.
Then I felt with my foot for the little platform at the top of the iron
stairs outside, found it, and dropped. Afterward I dragged the dreadful
burden down from the hole.
I had not known that I was strong before, and I do not understand now
how I managed to accomplish my wretched task.
I carried the dead man all the way down the fire-escape, clinging and
straining against the rotting, rusting bars, which bent and cracked
beneath my weight and seemed about to break and drag down the entire
structure from the wall.
I hardly paused at the platforms outside the successive stories. The
weather was growing very cold, a storm was coming up, and the wind
soughed and whined dismally around the eaves.
I reached the bottom at last and rested for a moment.
At the back of the house was a little vacant space, filled with heaps of
débris from the demolished portions of the building and with refuse
which had been dumped there by tenants who had left and had never
been removed. This yard was separated only by a rotting fence with a
single wooden rail from a small blind alley.
The alley had run between rows of stables in former days when this
was a fashionable quarter, but now these were mostly unoccupied, save
for a few more pretentious ones at the lower end, which were being
converted into garages.
Everywhere were heaps of brick, piles of rain-rotted wood, and
rubbish-heaps.
I took up my burden and placed it at the end of the alley, covering it
roughly with some old burlap bags which lay there. I thought it safe to
assume that the police would look upon the dead man as the victim of
some footpad. It was only remotely possible that suspicion would be

directed against any occupant of any of the houses bordering on the
_cul-de-sac_.
I did not search the dead man's pockets. I cared nothing who he was,
and did not want to know. My sole desire was to acquit Jacqueline of
his death in the world's eyes.
That he had come deservedly by it