door of the Red Room and the steps up to it were in a shadowy
corner. I moved my candle from side to side in order to see clearly the
nature of the recess in which I stood, before opening the door. Here it
was, thought I, that my predecessor was found, and the memory of
that story gave me a sudden twinge of apprehension. I glanced over my
shoulder at the black Ganymede in the moonlight, and opened the door
of the Red Room rather hastily, with my face half turned to the pallid
silence of the corridor.

I entered, closed the door behind me at once, turned the key I found
in the lock within, and stood with the candle held aloft surveying the
scene of my vigil, the great Red Room of Lorraine Castle, in which the
young Duke had died; or rather in which he had begun his dying, for
he had opened the door and fallen headlong down the steps I had just
ascended. That had been the end of his vigil, of his gallant attempt to
conquer the ghostly tradition of the place, and never, I thought, had
apoplexy better served the ends of superstition. There were other
and older stories that clung to the room, back to the half-incredible
beginning of it all, the tale of a timid wife and the tragic end that
came to her husband's jest of frightening her. And looking round that
huge shadowy room with its black window bays, its recesses and alcoves,
its dusty brown-red hangings and dark gigantic furniture, one could
well understand the legends that had sprouted in its black corners, its
germinating darknesses. My candle was a little tongue of light in the
vastness of the chamber; its rays failed to pierce to the opposite
end of the room, and left an ocean of dull red mystery and suggestion,
sentinel shadows and watching darknesses beyond its island of light. And
the stillness of desolation brooded over it all.

I must confess some impalpable quality of that ancient room disturbed
me. I tried to fight the feeling down. I resolved to make a systematic
examination of the place, and so, by leaving nothing to the imagination,
dispel the fanciful suggestions of the obscurity before they obtained
a hold upon me. After satisfying myself of the fastening of the door, I
began to walk round the room, peering round each article of furniture,
tucking up the valances of the bed and opening its curtains wide. In
one place there was a distinct echo to my footsteps, the noises I made
seemed so little that they enhanced rather than broke the silence of the
place.