Can I be sure that I am safe? Those powers survive the life of the physical form. The next day--in the afternoon, when I pulled out of my prostration and was able to walk and talk coherently--I went to the madhouse and shot him dead for Edward's and the world's sake, but can I be sure till he is cremated? They are keeping the body for some silly autopsies by different doctors--but I say he must be cremated. _He must be cremated--he who was not Edward Derby when I shot him._ I shall go mad if he is not, for I may be the next. But my will is not weak--and I shall not let it be undermined by the terrors I know are seething around it. One life--Ephraim, Asenath, and Edward--who now? I _will not_ be driven out of my body ... I _will not_ change souls with that bullet-ridden lich in the madhouse! But let me try to tell coherently of that final horror. I will not speak of what the police persistently ignored--the tales of that dwarfed, grotesque, malodorous thing met by at least three wayfarers in High Street just before two o'clock, and the nature of the single footprints in certain places. I will say only that just about two the door-bell and knocker waked me--door-bell and knocker both, plied alternately and uncertainly in a kind of weak desperation, _and each trying to keep to Edward's old signal of three-and-two strokes_. Roused from sound sleep, my mind leaped into a turmoil. Derby at the door--and remembering the old code! That new personality had not remembered it ... was Edward suddenly back in his rightful state? Why was he here in such evident stress and haste? Had he been released ahead of time, or had he escaped? Perhaps, I thought as I flung on a robe and bounded downstairs, his return to his own self had brought raving and violence, revoking his discharge and driving him to a desperate dash for freedom. Whatever had happened, he was good old Edward again, and I would help him! * * * * * When I opened the door into the elm-arched blackness a gust of insufferably fetid wind almost flung me prostrate. I choked in nausea, and for a second scarcely saw the dwarfed, humped figure on the steps. The summons had been Edward's, but who was this foul, stunted parody? Where had Edward had time to go? His ring had sounded only a second before the door opened. The caller had on one of Edward's overcoats--its bottom almost touching the ground, and its sleeves rolled back yet still covering the hands. On the head was a slouch hat pulled low, while a black silk muffler concealed the face. As I stepped unsteadily forward, the figure made a semi-liquid sound like that I had heard over the telephone--"_glub ... glub_"--and thrust at me a large, closely written paper impaled on the end of a long pencil. Still reeling from the morbid and unaccountable fetor, I seized the paper and tried to read it in the light from the doorway.