house, was dead. The great building was like
an immense burial vault, a tomb--silent and lifeless.

We had reached the most forbidding section of the narrow street, where a
single arch-lamp overhead cast a halo of ghastly yellow light over the
pavement. At the very rim of the circle of illumination, where the
shadows were deeper and more silent, I could make out the black
mouldings of a heavy iron grating. The bars of metal were designed, I
believe, to seal the side entrance of the great warehouse from night
marauders. It was bolted in place and secured with a set of immense
chains, immovable.

This much I saw as my intent gaze swept the wall before me. This huge
tomb of silence held for me a peculiar fascination, and as I paced along
beside my gloomy companion, I stared directly ahead of me into the
darkness of the street. I wish to God my eyes had been closed or
blinded!

* * * * *

He was hanging on the grating. Hanging there, with white, twisted hands
clutching the rigid bars of iron, straining to force them apart. His
whole distorted body was forced against the barrier, like the form of a
madman struggling to escape from his cage. His face--the image of it
still haunts me whenever I see iron bars in the darkness of a
passage--was the face of a man who has died from utter, stark horror. It
was frozen in a silent shriek of agony, staring out at me with fiendish
maliciousness. Lips twisted apart. White teeth gleaming in the light.
Bloody eyes, with a horrible glare of colorless pigment. And--_dead_.

I believe M. S. saw him at the very instant I recoiled. I felt a sudden
grip on my arm; and then, as an exclamation came harshly from my
companion's lips, I was pulled forward roughly. I found myself staring
straight into the dead eyes of that fearful thing before me, found
myself standing rigid, motionless, before the corpse that hung within
reach of my arm.

And then, through that overwhelming sense of the horrible, came the
quiet voice of my comrade--the voice of a man who looks upon death as
nothing more than an opportunity for research.

"The fellow has been frightened to death, Dale. Frightened most
horribly. Note the expression of his mouth, the evident struggle to
force these bars apart and escape. Something has driven fear to his
soul, killed him."

* * * * *

I remember the words vaguely. When M. S. had finished speaking, I did
not reply.