Was it dangerous?  I paid nothing but the usual rent.  His had always been a most respectable house—­in a disreputable neighbourhood.  Suddenly my temper gave way.  I told him to get out.  He began to protest, to jabber of his right of entry.  In a moment I had him by the collar; something ripped, and he went spinning out into his own passage.  I slammed and locked the door and sat down quivering.

“He made a fuss outside, which I disregarded, and after a time he went away.

“But this brought matters to a crisis.  I did not know what he would do, nor even what he had the power to do.  To move to fresh apartments would have meant delay; altogether I had barely twenty pounds left in the world, for the most part in a bank—­and I could not afford that.  Vanish!  It was irresistible.  Then there would be an inquiry, the sacking of my room.

“At the thought of the possibility of my work being exposed or interrupted at its very climax, I became very angry and active.  I hurried out with my three books of notes, my cheque-book—­the tramp has them now—­and directed them from the nearest Post Office to a house of call for letters and parcels in Great Portland Street.  I tried to go out noiselessly.  Coming in, I found my landlord going quietly upstairs; he had heard the door close, I suppose.  You would have laughed to see him jump aside on the landing as came tearing after him.  He glared at me as I went by him, and I made the house quiver with the slamming of my door.  I heard him come shuffling up to my floor, hesitate, and go down.  I set to work upon my preparations forthwith.

“It was all done that evening and night.  While I was still sitting under the sickly, drowsy influence of the drugs that decolourise blood, there came a repeated knocking at the door.  It ceased, footsteps went away and returned, and the knocking was resumed.  There was an attempt to push something under the door—­a blue paper.  Then in a fit of irritation I rose and went and flung the door wide open.  ‘Now then?’ said I.

“It was my landlord, with a notice of ejectment or something.  He held it out to me, saw something odd about my hands, I expect, and lifted his eyes to my face.

“For a moment he gaped.  Then he gave a sort of inarticulate cry, dropped candle and writ together, and went blundering down the dark passage to the stairs.  I shut the door, locked it, and went to the looking-glass.  Then I understood his terror....  My face was white—­like white stone.

“But it was all horrible.  I had not expected the suffering.  A night of racking anguish, sickness and fainting.  I set my teeth, though my skin was presently afire, all my body afire; but I lay there like grim death.  I understood now how it was the cat had howled until I chloroformed it.  Lucky it was I lived alone and untended in my room.  There were times when I sobbed and groaned and talked.  But I stuck to it....  I became insensible and woke languid in the darkness.