wonder that the fellow on the
grating below, after reading this orgy of horror, had suddenly gone mad
with fright. Little wonder that the picture engraved on his dead mind
was a picture of a corpse standing in the doorway of room 4167!

I glanced at that doorway and laughed. No doubt of it, it was that awful
description in M. S.'s untempered language that had made me dread my
surroundings, not the loneliness and silence of the corridors about me.
Now, as I stared at the room, the closed door, the shadows on the wall,
I could not repress a grin.

But the grin was not long in duration. A six-hour siege awaited me
before I could hear the sound of human voice again--six hours of
silence and gloom. I did not relish it. Thank God the fellow before me
had had foresight enough to leave his book of fantasy for my amusement!

* * * * *

I turned to the beginning of the story. A lovely beginning it was,
outlining in some detail how a certain Jack Fulton, English adventurer,
had suddenly found himself imprisoned (by a mysterious black gang of
monks, or something of the sort) in a forgotten cell at the monastery of
El Toro. The cell, according to the pages before me, was located in the
"empty, haunted pits below the stone floors of the structure...." Lovely
setting! And the brave Fulton had been secured firmly to a huge metal
ring set in the farther wall, opposite the entrance.

I read the description twice. At the end of it I could not help but lift
my head to stare at my own surroundings. Except for the location of the
cell, I might have been in they same setting. The same darkness, same
silence, same loneliness. Peculiar similarity!

And then: "Fulton lay quietly, without attempt to struggle. In the dark,
the stillness of the vaults became unbearable, terrifying. Not a
suggestion of sound, except the scraping of unseen rats--"

I dropped the book with a start. From the opposite end of the room in
which I sat came a half inaudible scuffling noise--the sound of hidden
rodents scrambling through the great pile of boxes. Imagination? I am
not sure. At the moment, I would have sworn that the sound was a
definite one, that I had heard it distinctly. Now, as I recount this
tale of horror, I am not sure.

But I am sure of this: There was no smile on my lips as I picked up the
book again with trembling fingers and continued.

"The sound died into silence. For an eternity, the prisoner lay rigid,
st