n a spot where I
had not felt comfortable from the first, I experienced an odd sensation
not unlike fear. It left me almost immediately and my full reasoning
powers reasserted themselves; but the experience had been mine and I
could not smile it away.

The result was a conviction, which even reason could not dispel,
that whatever secret tragedy or wrong had signalized this house, its
perpetration had taken place in this very room. It was a fancy, but it
held, and under its compelling if irrational influence, I made a second
and still more minute survey of the room to which this conviction had
imparted so definite an interest.

I found it just as ordinary and unsuggestive as before; an
old-fashioned, square apartment renovated and redecorated to suit modern
tastes. Its furnishings I have already described; they were such as may
be seen in any comfortable abode. I did not linger over them a moment;
besides, they were the property of the present tenant, and wholly
disconnected with the past I was insensibly considering. Only the four
walls and what they held, doors, windows and mantel-piece, remained to
speak of those old days. Of the doors there were two, one opening
into the main hall under the stairs, the other into a cross corridor
separating the library from the dining-room. It was through the
dining-room door Nixon had come when he so startled me by speaking
unexpectedly over my shoulder! The two windows faced the main door,
as did the ancient, heavily carved mantel. I could easily imagine the
old-fashioned shutters hidden behind the modern curtains, and, being
anxious to test the truth of my imaginings, rose and pulled aside one of
these curtains only to see, just as I expected, the blank surface of
a series of unslatted shutters, tightly fitting one to another with
old-time exactitude. A flat hook and staple fastened them. Gently
raising the window, and lifting one, I pulled the shutter open and
looked out. The prospect was just what I had been led to expect from the
location of the room--the long, bare wall of the neighboring house.
I was curious about that house, more curious at this moment than ever
before; for though it stood a good ten feet away from the one I was now
in, great pains had been taken by its occupants to close every opening
which might invite the glances of a prying eye. A door which had once
opened on the alley running between the two houses had been removed and
its place boarded up. So with a