"Do," he said. "It will make a clever sixth shove for me. People say your fancies are too wild and extravagant even now. A story like that will finish you at once." "Again, thanks," said I, very calmly. "This time for the hint. Acting on your advice, I won't write it up." "Don't," he retorted. "And be forever haunted with the idea. Either way, it suits me." And he vanished once more. The next morning Peters arrived at my house. "I've come," he said, as he entered my den. "The scheme is perfected at last, and possibly you can use it. You need help of some kind. I can see that, just by reading your telegram. You're nervous as a cat. How do you heat your house?" "What's that got to do with it?" I demanded, irritably. "You can't evaporate the little cuss." "Don't want to," Peters replied. "That's been tried before, and it doesn't work. My scheme is a better one than that. Did you ever notice, while smoking in a house that is heated by a hot-air furnace, how, when a cloud of smoke gets caught in the current of air from the register, it is mauled and twisted until it gets free, or else is torn entirely apart?" "Yes, I have," said I. "What of it?" "Well, what's the matter with being genial with your old cockney until he gets in the habit of coming here every night, and bide your time until, without his knowing it, you can turn a blast from the furnace on him that will simply rend him to pieces?" "By Jove!" I cried, delightedly. "You are a genius, old chap." I rose and shook his hand until he remonstrated. "Save your energy for him," said he. "You'll need it. It won't be a pleasant spectacle to witness when, in his struggles to get away, he is gradually dismembered. It will be something like the drawing and quartering punishment of olden times." I shuddered as I thought of it, and for a moment was disposed to reject the plan, but my weakness left me as I thought of the ruin that stared me in the face. "Oh, I don't know," I said, shaking my head. "It will have its pleasurable side, however fearsome it may prove as a sight. This house is just fitted for the operation, particularly on warm days. I have seen times when the blasts of hot air from my furnace have blown one of my poems off my table across the room." "Great Scott!" cried Peters. "What a cyclone of an air-box you must have!"