keyhole I found to be covered by a plate on the other side. I carefully examined the window once more, but the iron bars were too close and strong to afford me the slightest chance of escape that way. The chimney, too, after a glance, was abandoned as hopeless. That unaccountable stillness still continued, although it was now broad day. I would break it at any risk, happen what might. I went back to the door and shook it, and hallooed with all my strength, calling Jacoby and the landlord by name; but there came no response save a few dull echoes, and when they died away, silence fell on the place once more.
There was a small semicircular opening near the top of the door, probably intended originally as a means of ventilation to the room, and while casting about for some way of escape, the thought struck me that by getting on a chair and looking through the opening, I might ascertain something that would be of service to me. Next moment I had placed one of the two rickety chairs close to the door, and mounting it with caution, found that my eyes were exactly on a level with the opening. On looking through, my glance traversed, first, the floor of the passage, following the thread of water, and tracing it back by degrees to the door of Jacoby’s room, which, as stated before, was opposite mine, at the other end of the passage, and which, I now saw, as I followed the stream with my eyes, was standing wide open. Having traced the thread of water till it was lost behind the angle of the entrance to the pedlar’s room, my glance fell on a small dressing-table standing in the room exactly opposite the door; and from the dressing table went up to an oval looking-glass placed thereon, and then stopped, suddenly transfixed with horror at seeing the reflection of a ghastly face staring intently at me from the glass.
It was the face of Jacoby without doubt, so much I could clearly distinguish; but although the eyes were wide open, and staring with grim fixity of purpose; and although the half-open lips seemed grinning at me in bitter derision; it was none the less the face of a dead man.
That my poor friend had been foully murdered I could no longer doubt; but how did it happen that I had escaped a similar fate? There was the white face, changeless and speechless; but beyond that all was conjecture and vague surmise, got down gently from my post of observation, feeling very sick at heart, and more overcome just then, I think, with pity for the sad fate of my friend, than with apprehension for what might happen to myself. Still that same deathlike and oppressive silence, so that the buzzing of a fly on the window sounded in the stillness unnaturally loud and intrusive.
More impressed than ever with the necessity for immediate action, I began, as soon as I had in some measure recovered from the effect of seeing the face in the glass, to cast about in my mind again for some means of effecting my escape. Picking up my knife from the floor where it had lain neglected for some hours past, I at once set to work to try to cut away one of the panels of the stout old door; but I broke my knife before I had been at work five minutes, and then gave up the attempt in despair. There was a dreadful fascination about that face in the glass which I found it impossible to resist, and standing on the chair, I again looked through the opening in the door, and turned my eyes slowly towards it, half expecting to find that it had disappeared. But it was still there, as grim, ghastly, and immovable as before. The pallid lips seemed to stir with inaudible words as I looked; but the wide-open eyes stared steadfastly into mine with a glassy changelessness of expression that chilled my blood to look upon.
Gathering heart somewhat after a time, I again went to work on the door with my broken knife; labouring on, hour after hour, with wearying persistency, but making such small progress that had I not felt that my life depended on the success of my efforts, I should have given up the task a hundred times in despair.
Noon came and went. A dull gnawing pain began to make itself felt, which I knew proceeded from the want of food, though hunger in the ordinary sense of the word I did not feel; I began to get weaker, too, as the afternoon advanced, and to labour like a man in a dream. I think that after a time I must have fallen into a kind of stupor, induced by weariness and exhaustion, as Isat before the door with my head resting in my hands. When I came to myself again, I found that the wind had risen, and that the first shades of evening were beginning to creep into the room. I stood up, weary, sick, and faint at heart, and asked myself how it would be possible to live through another night all alone in that terrible house. I calculated that even with daylight and my full strength, it would have been a work of several hours to cut my way out; and now both daylight and strength were failing me rapidly.
A dull lowering evening, with rain and heavy: wind. Hark! what a blast was that! it seemed to shake the rickety old house to its foundations, making the floors creak, and the windows rattle, and the whole tumble-down edifice to shiver and groan in the grasp of its invisible arms. Suddenly I was startled by the clashing of some distant door; then there was a faint rustle and whisper up the stairs and along the passage, as though the ghost of the murdered man were coming back to revisit its tenement; then the strong gust outside swept swiftly away down the valley inland; and a brief lull followed. It was needful that I should look once more on the face in the glass while there was still sufficient daylight left to see it by. I felt drawn to do this by some inward necessity, some occult magnetism working against my better nature. What, then, was my surprise and horror when, on looking once more through the opening in the door, and staring steadfastly into the glass, I saw that it was blank—that the face was no longer there!
I looked, and looked again, but with the same result; the face had certainly disappeared; the glass reflected nothing but the opposite wall of the room, and part of the furniture of a bed. The blood round my heart grew cold as I looked; I got off the chair, and went and sat down in the corner of the room farthest from the door, and peered fearfully into the gathering gloom; struggling hard to crush down the dim ghostly fancies,