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PARTISAN REVIEW
revealed a sort of increasingly open and undisguised hatred, if not
horror, of woman, that castrated monstrosity.
"The second and the third day passed, and still my tormentor
came not. Once again I breathed as a free man. The monster, in ter–
ror, had fled the premises forever! I should behold it no more! My
happiness was supreme! The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but
little. Some few inquiries had been made.... Even a search had
been instituted-but of course nothing was to be discovered."
Nevertheless, on the fourth day of the murder, police enter the
house and rigorously investigate the premises.
"At length, for the third or fourth time, they descended into the
cellar.... My heart beat calmly.... I walked the cellar from end
to end ... and roamed easily to and fro."
Then, as the police, finally satisfied, give up their search and
prepare to depart, the "glee" in the murderer's heart is "too strong to
be restrained." He burns to say "if but one word, by way of triumph"
and bursts out, "as the party ascended the steps" . . .
"Gentlemen! ... I delight to have allayed your suspicions. I
wish you all health, and a little more courtesy. By the bye, gentlemen
... this is ... an
excellently
well constructed house. These walls–
are you going, gentlemen?-these walls are solidly put together."
And now, led on by the Imp of the Perverse, in a confessional urge,
both exhibitionist and self-punishing, the murderer, "through the mere
phrenzy of bravado," raps heavily, with a cane,
"upon that very portion of the brick-work behind which stood the
corpse of the wife of my bosom."
The result is appalling.
"No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence, than
I was answered by a voice from within the tomb !-by a cry, at first
muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly
swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream ... a howl-a
wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have
arisen only out of hell. . . . Swooning, I staggered to the opposite
wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless,
through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a dozen stout
arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already
greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of
the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary
