He looked round and saw the knife that had killed Basil Hallward. ‘Now it will kill the artist’s work,’ he said to himself. ‘It will kill the past, and when that is dead, I will be free.’ He picked up the knife and dug it into the picture. There was a terrible cry and a loud crash. The servants woke, and two gentlemen, who were passing in the road below, stopped and looked up at the house. A policeman came by, and they asked him: ‘Whose house is that?’ ‘Mr Dorian Gray’s, sir,’ was the answer. The two gentlemen looked at each other, then turned away from the house and walked on. Inside the house the servants talked in low, frightened voices. After some minutes they went up to the room. They knocked, but there was no reply. They called out. Nothing. They could not open the door, so they climbed down from the roof and got in through the window. Against the wall they saw a fine portrait of the young Dorian Gray, in all his wonderful youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, with a knife in his heart. His face was old and ugly and yellow with disease. Only the rings on his fingers told them who he was.
