In that laboratory of his which Fulk wished to explore, and which was a harmless-looking room—without so much as a phial or a microscope in view, there was at one corner, not very far from the fireplace, a long upright cupboard, reaching from the floor to the ceiling. Or, rather, the cupboard rose about halfway, and a bookcase reached the remainder. It was a shallow cupboard. There were no locks to the doors. Any one could pull them open, and see a few trifles within—such trifles as might be found in any bachelor’s room. The bookcase was also shallow, but there was depth enough back for some rows of books. The books were harmless enough—mostly medical works, just such works as any one can purchase who cares to. Nothing certainly here to excite suspicion. Yet behind that cupboard and bookcase was concealed the most deadly, insidious, awful engine ever constructed by man—an engine about which no secrecy exists either, and which living men have seen in operation; which has been described in the papers; and which the legislature must put down, or strictly regulate. Upon removing one of the books, Theodore had merely to push aside a small brass plate, which looked like part of a hinge, and there was a keyhole; turn the key, and the whole cupboard swung bodily out into the room. It was, in fact, a blind, placed in front of a narrow inner door, which rose to the ceiling. When the door was open, there stood revealed an iron box, not unlike an extremely long coffin, placed on end. There was a keyhole—two key-holes—to this iron box. Open the first, and there was a large cavity, tall enough for a man to sit on a bar which went across it, without his head touching the iron roof. In this iron roof there was an opening, not unlike a small grating. Put the key in the second keyhole, above the first, and there was the apparatus, greatly improved by Theodore, but in substance the same as used in other places—the apparatus for absorbing the smell of the gases which arise from a human body when consumed by heat. Every one knows that if the smoke of a pipe be passed through water in a peculiar way, it loses its pungency, and you can inhale it with more comfort: this is the hookah. Everybody also knows that manufacturers in great towns are compelled to consume their own smoke, and all have seen a lump of loaf sugar suck up a spoonful of tea. A combination of these principles formed Theodore’s deadly engine, which was nothing more or less than a private cremation stove. The ordinary fire in the harmless-looking fireplace produced sufficient heat, when a draught was caused by turning a winch with a multiplying wheel placed at the lower part of the cupboard, just beneath the cavity which was to receive the body. This body, made thoroughly insensible and unconscious by being saturated with chloroform or strong drugs—or, if you like, still more insensible with a trifle of arsenic—had merely to be lifted into its iron coffin, the