United States or Puerto Rico ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
By what caprice of imagination was it that the sight of this false beard lying at Bourgonef's feet thrilled me with horror? In one lightning-flash I beheld the archway the stranger with the startled eyes this stranger no longer unknown to me, but too fatally recognized as Bourgonef and at his feet the murdered girl!
The dagger that had already immolated two of Bourgonef's objects of vengeance would have been in my breast. As it was, at the very moment when the terrible Ivan had thrown his arms around me and was stifling me with chloroform, one of the servants of the hotel, alarmed or attracted by curiosity at the sound of high words within the room, had ventured to open the door to see what was going on.
In itself this would have had little significance; but coupled with the fact that his devoted servant was in spite of all Bourgonef's eulogies repulsively ferocious in aspect, capable, as I could not help believing, of any brutality, the suggestion was unpleasant.
A day or two after our arrival in Munich a reaction began steadily to set in. Ashamed as I was of my suspicions, I could not altogether banish from my mind the incident which had awakened them. The image of that false beard would mingle with my thoughts. I was vaguely uncomfortable at the idea of Bourgonef's carrying about with him obvious materials of disguise.
Bourgonef's story has been narrated with some fullness, though in less detail than he told it, in order that the reader may understand its real bearings on MY story. Without it, the motives which impelled the strange pertinacity of my pursuit would have been unintelligible.
To my unsuspecting, unenlightened perception, Bourgonef's gaze was simply the melancholy and half-curious gaze which such a man might be supposed to cast upon a young woman who had been made the topic of an interesting discourse. But to my mind, enlightened as to his character, and instructed as to his peculiar feelings arising from his own story, the gaze was charged with horror.
Seated in Bourgonef's room, in the old place, each with a cigar, and chatting as of old on public affairs, I gradually approached the subject of the recent murder. "Is it not strange," I said, "that both these crimes should have happened while we were casually staying in both places?" "Perhaps we are the criminals," he replied, laughing. I shivered slightly at this audacity.
I didn't know that; what I did know was that I didn't like his looks. On this night he was moving noiselessly about the room, employed in packing. Bourgonef's talk rambled over the old themes; and I thought I had never before met with one of my own age whose society was so perfectly delightful.
The directing intelligence withdrawn, he sank to the level of the brute. I was not uneasy, therefore, at his having escaped. Sufficient for me that the real criminal, the mind that had conceived and directed those fearful murders, was at last in the hands of justice. I felt that my task had been fully accomplished when Bourgonef's head fell on the scaffold. The Closed Cabinet
Moved by what subtle springs of suggestion I know not, but there before me stood that dreadful vision, seen in a lurid light, but seen as clearly as if the actual presence of the objects were obtruding itself upon my eyes. In the inexpressible horror of this vision my heart seemed clutched with an icy hand. Fortunately Bourgonef's attention was called away from me.
Word Of The Day