The Lock and Key Library: The most interesting stories of all nations: American — John Shaqi
The Lock and Key Library: The most interesting stories of all nations: American
General
The Lock and Key Library: The most interesting stories of all nations: American
Detective and mystery stories; Short stories, American
When he had finally cut the body into as small pieces as possible,
he replaced the knife in its sheath, washed his hands, and went out
of the bathroom and downstairs to the lower hall. The sailor
seemed perfectly familiar with the house. By a side door he passed
into the cellar. There he lighted the gas, opened one of the wine
cases, and, taking up all the bottles that he could conveniently
carry, returned to the bathroom. There he poured the contents into
the tub on the dismembered body, and then returned to the cellar
with the empty bottles, which he replaced in the wine cases. This
he continued to do until all the cases but one were emptied and the
bath tub was more than half full of liquid. This liquid was
sulphuric acid.
When the sailor returned to the cellar with the last empty wine
bottles, he opened the fifth case, which really contained wine,
took some of it out, and poured a little into each of the empty
bottles in order to remove any possible odor of the sulphuric acid.
Then he turned out the gas and brought up to the bathroom with him
the two paper flour sacks and the little heavy bundle. These sacks
were filled with nitrate of soda. He set them down by the door,
opened the little bundle, and took out two long rubber tubes, each
attached to a heavy gas burner, not unlike the ordinary burners of
a small gas stove. He fastened the tubes to two of the gas jets,
put the burners under the tub, turned the gas on full, and lighted
it. Then he threw into the tub the woman’s clothing and the papers
which he had found on her body, after which he took up the two
heavy sacks of nitrate of soda and dropped them carefully into the
sulphuric acid. When he had done this he went quickly out of the
bathroom and closed the door.
The deadly acids at once attacked the body and began to destroy it;
as the heat increased, the acids boiled and the destructive process
was rapid and awful. From time to time the sailor opened the door
of the bathroom cautiously, and, holding a wet towel over his mouth
and nose, looked in at his horrible work. At the end of a few
hours there was only a swimming mass in the tub. When the man
looked at four o’clock, it was all a thick murky liquid. He turned
off the gas quickly and stepped back out of the room. For perhaps
half an hour he waited in the hall; finally, when the acids had
cooled so that they no longer gave off fumes, he opened the door
and went in, took hold of the platinum wire and, pulling the
porcelain disk from the stopcock, allowed the awful contents of the
tub to run out. Then he turned on the hot water, rinsed the tub
clean, and replaced the metal outlet. Removing the rubber tubes,
he cut them into pieces, broke the porcelain disk, and, rolling up
the platinum wire, washed it all down the sewer pipe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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