In the crowded shabbier streets of
London there were lodging-houses
where one, by taking precautions,
could end his life in such a manner
as would blot him out of any world
where such a man as himself had been
known. A pistol, properly managed,
would obliterate resemblance to any
human thing. Months ago through
chance talk he had heard how it
could be done--and done quickly.
He could leave a misleading letter.
He had planned what it should be--
the story it should tell of a
disheartened mediocre venturer of his
poor all returning bankrupt and
humiliated from Australia, ending
existence in such pennilessness that
the parish must give him a pauper's
grave. What did it matter where a
man lay, so that he slept--slept--
slept? Surely with one's brains
scattered one would sleep soundly
anywhere.
He had come to the house the
night before, dressed shabbily with
the pitiable respectability of a
defeated man. He had entered
droopingly with bent shoulders and
hopeless hang of head. In his own
sphere he was a man who held himself
well. He had let fall a few
dispirited sentences when he had
engaged his back room from the
woman of the house, and she had
recognized him as one of the luckless.
In fact, she had hesitated a
moment before his unreliable look
until he had taken out money from
his pocket and paid his rent for a
week in advance. She would have
that at least for her trouble, he had
said to himself.
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