Murder Will Out

They say murder will out—I wonder if that’s true? Let me see; it’s thirty years since that Schrapnell case—full thirty years; that was never found out—never will be, probably. Then, ten years ago, the Farwell case occupied the public mind—a foul murder that was—never the least clue to the perpetrators has leaked into the public press, though thousands of dollars were spent to find the murderer. 

It was a case of jealousy—if my memory serves me right—a girl and her lover both killed—or a young bride and her husband—I have forgotten which. No, no; murder does not always leak out. Suppose I write a story—nobody will believe that I was the chief actor. My gray hairs, my great respectability, are against the supposition. Here sit I in my room—a gentleman of fortune, one who loves luxury and will have it. It is twenty-five years since—bah! why should I tell? And then I was forty-five, a hale, young-looking man. Nobody guessed my age; in fact, I flatter myself that caution and good living have preserved a fine physique moderately well. 

I have never married—plenty of chances, oh, yes: without vanity, I may say hundreds—pretty, medium and beautiful girls, thrown at me. It may have been one of my penalties that I am a single man—perhaps, but why should one complain? If I have missed the pleasures of domestic life, there are also its perils escaped. Besides, having a face ever before me, an ear always beside me—I am not sure I could have kept my secret. Not that it has troubled me at all—save when my digestion may have been out of order. I take it that a man’s stomach is a sort of thermometer of his conscience. Let the gastric juices get a trifle wrong, and down drops the quicksilver, or vice versa up it goes to its extremest limits. 

All these years I have lived like a gentleman. It was ever my… Read More