y, the 20th of November. The ink still smells
fresh, but it is so damp here, the paper may have been older. I do not
know surely on what day it is that I begin to write this narrative. I do
not know either whether I may not have been ill for days and weeks; I do
not know what may have been the matter with me--I know only that I was
unconscious, and that when I came to myself again, I was here in this
gloomy room. Did any physician see me? I have seen no one until to-day
except the old woman, whose name I do not know and who has so little to
say. She is kind to me otherwise, but I am afraid of her hard face and
of the smile with which she answers all my questions and entreaties.
'You are ill.' These are the only words that she has ever said to me,
and she pointed to her forehead as she spoke them. She thinks I am
insane, therefore, or pretends to think so.

"What a hoarse voice she has. She must be ill herself, for she coughs
all night long. I can hear it through the wall--she sleeps in the next
room. But I am not ill, that is I am not ill in the way she says. I have
no fever now, my pulse is calm and regular. I can remember everything,
until I took that drink of tea in the railway station. What could there
have been in that tea? I suppose I should have noticed how anxious my
travelling companion was to have me drink it.

"Who could the man have been? He was so polite, so fatherly in his
anxiety about me. I have not seen him since then. And yet I feel that it
is he who has brought me into this trap, a trap from which I may never
escape alive. I will describe him. He is very tall, stout and blond,
and wears a long heavy beard, which is slightly mixed with grey. On his
right cheek his beard only partly hides a long scar. His eyes are hidden
by large smoked glasses. His voice is low and gentle, his manners most
correct--except for his giving people poison or whatever else it was in
that tea.

"I did not suffer any--at least I do not remember anything except
becoming unconscious. And I seem to have felt a pain like an iron ring
around my head. But I am not insane, and this fear that I feel does
not spring from my imagination, but from the real danger by which I am
surrounded. I am very hungry, but I do not dare to eat anything except
eggs, which cannot be tampered with. I tasted some soup yesterday, and
it seemed to me that it had a queer taste. I will eat nothing that is at
all suspicious. I will be in my full senses when