Though almost
instantaneous in its passing, it was perfectly clear; so clear that
I distinctly, and with a sense of relief, observed the absence of
the dead body from the bed.
It was in no romantic place that I had this curious sensation, but
in chambers in Piccadilly, very near to the corner of St. James's
Street. It was entirely new to me. I was in my easy-chair at the
moment, and the sensation was accompanied with a peculiar shiver
which started the chair from its position. (But it is to be noted
that the chair ran easily on castors.) I went to one of the windows
(there are two in the room, and the room is on the second floor) to
refresh my eyes with the moving objects down in Piccadilly. It was
a bright autumn morning, and the street was sparkling and cheerful.
The wind was high. As I looked out, it brought down from the Park a
quantity of fallen leaves, which a gust took, and whirled into a
spiral pillar. As the pillar fell and the leaves dispersed, I saw
two men on the opposite side of the way, going from West to East.
They were one behind the other. The foremost man often looked back
over his shoulder. The second man followed him, at a distance of
some thirty paces, with his right hand menacingly raised. First,
the singularity and steadiness of this threatening gesture in so
public a thoroughfare attracted my attention; and next, the more
remarkable circumstance that nobody heeded it. Both men threaded
their way among the other passengers with a smoothness hardly
consistent even with the action of walking on a pavement; and no
single creature, that I could see, gave them place, touched them, or
looked after them. In passing before my windows, they both stared
up at me. I saw their two faces very distinctly, and I knew that I
could recognise them anywhere. Not that I had consciously noticed
anything very remarkable in either face, except that the man who
went first had an unusually lowering appearance, and that the face
of the man who followed him was of the colour of impure wax.
I am a bachelor, and my valet and his wife constitute my whole
establishment. My occupation is in a certain Branch Bank, and I
wish that my duties as head of a Department were as light as they
are popularly supposed to be. They kept me in town that autumn,
when I stood in need of change. I was not ill, but I was not well.
My reader is to make the most that can be reasonably made of my
feeling jaded, having a depressing sense upon me of a monotonous
life, and being "slightly dyspeptic." I am assured by my renowned
doctor that my real state of health at that time justifies no
stronger description, and I quote his own from his written answer to
my request for it.
As the circumstances of the murder, gradually unravelling, took
stronger and stronger possession of the public mind, I kept them
away from mine by knowing as little about them as was possible in
the midst of the universal excitement. But I knew that a verdict of
Wilful Murder had been found against the suspected murderer, and
that he had been committed to Newgate for trial. I also knew that
his trial had been postponed over one Sessions of the Central
Criminal Court, on the ground of general prejudice and want of time
for the preparation of the defence. I may further have known, but I
believe I did not, when, or about when, the Sessions to which his
trial stood postponed would come on.
