“Would you like to see a murder done?”

This gruesome question almost startled me out of my chair.

“Good gracious!” I exclaimed, “certainly not.”

“And yet you write about such things.”

“That is quite a different matter. But you must excuse me for saying that I do not understand the object of these questions. May I ask who you are?”

“I am a murderer.”

“i am a murderer.”

My visitor said this in the calmest way, as though he were only calling himself a clerk or a carpenter.

“A murderer?” I gasped rather than asked.