The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Old Time English
General
The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Old Time English
Detective and mystery stories; Fiction; Ghost stories
Between the pages were cut most exquisitely in paper the likenesses
of some of these Turkish ambassadors; the hair of the beards, in
particular, was feathered with a delicacy of touch that seemed the
work of fairy fingers,--but the pages ended with a complaint of the
operator, that his scissors had been taken from him. However, he
consoled himself and the reader with the assurance, that he would
that night catch a moonbeam as it entered through the grating, and,
when he had whetted it on the iron knobs of his door, would do
wonders with it. In the next page was found a melancholy proof of
powerful but prostrated intellect. It contained some insane lines,
ascribed to Lee the dramatic poet, commencing,
"O that my lungs could bleat like buttered pease," &c.
There is no proof whatever that these miserable lines were really
written by Lee, except that the measure is the fashionable quatrain
of the period. It is singular that Stanton read on without
suspicion of his own danger, quite absorbed in the album of a
madhouse, without ever reflecting on the place where he was, and
which such compositions too manifestly designated.
It was after a long interval that he looked round, and perceived
that his companion was gone. Bells were unusual then. He
proceeded to the door,--it was fastened. He called aloud,--his
voice was echoed in a moment by many others, but in tones so wild
and discordant, that he desisted in involuntary terror. As the day
advanced, and no one approached, he tried the window, and then
perceived for the first time it was grated. It looked out on the
narrow flagged yard, in which no human being was; and if there had,
from such a being no human feeling could have been extracted.
Sickening with unspeakable horror, he sunk rather than sat down
beside the miserable window, and "wished for day."
. . . . .
At midnight he started from a doze, half a swoon, half a sleep,
which probably the hardness of his seat, and of the deal table on
which he leaned, had not contributed to prolong.
He was in complete darkness; the horror of his situation struck him
at once, and for a moment he was indeed almost qualified for an
inmate of that dreadful mansion. He felt his way to the door,
shook it with desperate strength, and uttered the most frightful
cries, mixed with expostulations and commands. His cries were in a
moment echoed by a hundred voices. In maniacs there is a peculiar
malignity, accompanied by an extraordinary acuteness of some of the
senses, particularly in distinguishing the voice of a stranger.
The cries that he heard on every side seemed like a wild and
infernal yell of joy, that their mansion of misery had obtained
another tenant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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