As he did this a bundle of papers dropped upon the
floor; these he glanced at hastily and put into his pocket. Then
he took the dead woman up in his arms, went out into the hall, and
started to go up the stairway. The body was relaxed and heavy, and
for that reason difficult to carry. He doubled it up into an awful
heap, with the knees against the chin, and walked slowly and
heavily up the stairs and out into the bathroom. There he laid the
corpse down on the tiled floor. Then he opened the window, closed
the shutters, and lighted the gas. The bathroom was small and
contained an ordinary steel tub, porcelain lined, standing near the
window and raised about six inches above the floor. The sailor
went over to the tub, pried up the metal rim of the outlet with his
knife, removed it, and fitted into its place a porcelain disk which
he took from his pocket; to this disk was attached a long platinum
wire, the end of which he fastened on the outside of the tub.
After he had done this he went back to the body, stripped off its
clothing, put it down in the tub and began to dismember it with the
great Mexican knife.
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