How he met him on the platform with a pretended message from the
board, how he offered to conduct him by a short cut across the
fields to Mallingford, how, having brought him to a lonely place,
he struck him down with the life-preserver, and so killed him, and
how, finding what he had done, he dragged the body to the verge of an
out-of-the-way chalk-pit, and there flung it in and piled it over
with branches and brambles, are facts still fresh in the memories
of those who, like the connoisseurs in De Quincey's famous essay,
regard murder as a fine art. Strangely enough, the murderer having
done his work, was afraid to leave the country. He declared that
he had not intended to take the director's life, but only to stun
and rob him and that, finding the blow had killed, he dared not
fly for fear of drawing down suspicion upon his own head. As a mere
robber he would have been safe in the States, but as a murderer he
would inevitably have been pursued and given up to justice. So he
forfeited his passage, returned to the office as usual at the end
of his leave, and locked up his ill-gotten thousands till a more
convenient opportunity. In the meanwhile he had the satisfaction
of finding that Mr.
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