The Momentous Adventure with the Stranger with the Silver Ear-rings
So our hero stood stunned and bedazed, gazing down upon his victim, like a man turned into a stone.His brain appeared to him to expand like a bubble, the blood surged and bummed in his ears with every gigantic beat of his heart, his vision swam, and his trembling hands were bedewed with a cold and repugnant sweat.The dead figure upon the floor at his feet gazed at him with a wide, glassy stare, and in the confusion of his mind it appeared to Jonathan that he was, indeed, a murderer.
What monstrous thing was this that had befallen him who, but a moment before, had been so entirely innocent of the guilt of blood? What was he now to do in such an extremity as this, with his victim lying dead at his feet, a poniard in his heart? Who would believe him to be guiltless of crime with such a dreadful evidence as this presented against him? How was he, a stranger in a foreign land, to totally defend himself against an accusing of mistaken justice? At these thoughts a developed terror gripped at his vitals and a sweat as cold as ice bedewed his entire body.
No, he must tarry for no explanation or defense! He must immediately fly from this terrible place, or else, should he be discovered, his doom would certainly be sealed!
At that moment, and in the very extremity of his apprehensions, there fell of a sudden a knock upon the door, sounding so loud and so startling upon the silence of the room that every shattered nerve in our hero's frame tingled and thrilled in answer to it.He stood petrified, scarcely so much as daring to breathe; and then, observing that his mouth was agape, he moistened his dry and parching lips, and drew his jaws together with a snap.
Again there fell the same loud, insistent knock upon the panel, followed by the imperative words: "Open within!"The wretched Jonathan flung about him a glance at once of terror and of despair, but there was for him no possible escape.He was shut tight in the room with his dead victim, like a rat in a trap.Nothing remained for him but to obey the summons from without.Indeed, in the very extremity of his distraction, he possessed reason enough to perceive that the longer he delayed opening the door the less innocent he might hope to appear in the eyes of whoever stood without.
With the uncertain and spasmodic movements of an ill-constructed automaton, he crossed the room, and stepping very carefully over the prostrate body upon the floor, and with a hesitating reluctance that he could in no degree master, he unlocked, unbolted, and opened the door.
The figure that outlined itself in the light of the candle, against the blackness of the passageway without was of such a singular and foreign aspect as to fit extremely well into the extraordinary tragedy of which Jonathan was at once the victim and the cause.
It was that of a lean, tall man with a thin, yellow countenance, embellished with a long, black mustache, and having a pair of forbidding, deeply set, and extremely restless black eyes.Acrimson handkerchief beneath a lace cocked hat was tied tightly around the head, and a pair of silver earrings, which caught the light of the candle, gleamed and twinkled against the inky darkness of the passageway beyond.
This extraordinary being, without favoring our hero with any word of apology for his intrusion, immediately thrust himself forward into the room, and stretching his long, lean, bird-like neck so as to direct his gaze over the intervening table, fixed a gaping and concentrated stare upon the figure lying still and motionless in the centre of the room.
"Vat you do dare," said he, with a guttural and foreign accent, and thereupon, without waiting for a reply, came forward and knelt down beside the dead man.After thrusting his hand into the silent and shrunken bosom, he presently looked up and fixed his penetrating eyes upon our hero's countenance, who, benumbed and bedazed with his despair, still stood like one enchained in the bonds of a nightmare."He vas dead!" said the stranger, and Jonathan nodded his head in reply.
"Vy you keel ze man?" inquired his interlocutor.
