Produced by Suzanne Shell, David Garcia and PG Distributed Proofreaders THE ROOM IN THE DRAGON VOLANT By J. Sheridan LeFanu _Other books by J. Sheridan LeFanu_ The Cock and Anchor Torlogh O'Brien The Home by the Churchyard Uncle Silas Checkmate Carmilla The Wyvern Mystery Guy Deverell Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery The Chronicles of Golden Friars In a Glass Darkly The Purcell Papers The Watcher and Other Weird Stories A Chronicle of Golden Friars and Other Stories Madam Crowl's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery Green Tea and Other Stones Sheridan LeFanu: The Diabolic Genius Best Ghost Stories of J.S. LeFanu The Best Horror Stories The Vampire Lovers and Other Stories Ghost Stories and Mysteries The Hours After Midnight J.S. LeFanu: Ghost Stories and Mysteries Ghost and Horror Stones Green Tea and Other Ghost Stories Carmilla and Other Classic Tales of Mystery The Room in the Dragon Volant _Prologue_ _The curious case which I am about to place before you, is referred to, very pointedly, and more than once, in the extraordinary Essay upon the Drug of the Dark and the Middle Ages, from the pen of Doctor Hesselius_. _This Essay he entitles_ Mortis Imago, _and he, therein, discusses the_ Vinum letiferum, _the_ Beatifica, _the_ Somnus Angelorum, _the_ Hypnus Sagarum, _the_ Aqua Thessalliae, _and about twenty other infusions and distillations, well known to the sages of eight hundred years ago, and two of which are still, he alleges, known to the fraternity of thieves, and, among them, as police-office inquiries sometimes disclose to this day, in practical use_. _The Essay,_ Mortis Imago, _will occupy, as nearly as I can at present calculate, two volumes, the ninth and tenth, of the collected papers of Dr. Martin Hesselius_. _This Essay, I may remark in conclusion, is very curiously enriched by citations, in great abundance, from medieval verse and prose romance, some of the most valuable of which, strange to say, are Egyptian_. _I have selected this particular statement from among many cases equally striking, but hardly, I think, so effective as mere narratives; in this irregular form of publication, it is simply as a story that I present it_. Chapter I ON THE ROAD In the eventful year, 1815, I was exactly three-and-twenty, and had just succeeded to a very large sum in consols and other securities. The first fall of Napoleon had thrown the continent open to English excursionists, anxious, let us suppose, to improve their minds by foreign travel; and I--the slight check of the "hundred days" removed, by the genius of Wellington, on the field of Waterloo--was now added to the philosophic throng.