I knew that my enemies hated me too much to allow me
the boon of death, but poison sufficient to aggravate my discomfort. At
breakfast I had cantaloupe, liberally sprinkled with salt. The salt
seemed to pucker my mouth, and I believed it to be powdered alum.
Usually, with my supper, sliced peaches were served. Though there was
sugar on the peaches, salt would have done as well. Salt, sugar, and
powdered alum had become the same to me.

Familiar materials had acquired a different "feel." In the dark, the
bed sheets at times seemed like silk. As I had not been born with a
golden spoon in my mouth, or other accessories of a useless luxury, I
believed the detectives had provided these silken sheets for some
hostile purpose of their own. What that purpose was I could not divine,
and my very inability to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion stimulated
my brain to the assembling of disturbing thoughts in an almost endless
train.

Imaginary breezes struck my face, gentle, but not welcome, most of them
from parts of the room where currents of air could not possibly
originate. They seemed to come from cracks in the walls and ceiling and
annoyed me exceedingly. I thought them in some way related to that
ancient method of torture by which water is allowed to strike the
victim's forehead, a drop at a time, until death releases him. For a
while my sense of smell added to my troubles. The odor of burning human
flesh and other pestilential fumes seemed to assail me.

My sense of sight was subjected to many weird and uncanny effects.
Phantasmagoric visions made their visitations throughout the night, for
a time with such regularity that I used to await their coming with a
certain restrained curiosity. I was not entirely unaware that something
was ailing with my mind. Yet these illusions of sight I took for the
work of detectives, who sat up nights racking their brains in order to
rack and utterly wreck my own with a cruel and unfair Third Degree.

Handwriting on the wall has ever struck terror to the hearts of even
sane men. I remember as one of my most unpleasant experiences that I
began to see handwriting on the sheets of my bed staring me in the
face, and not me alone, but also the spurious relatives who often stood
or sat near me. On each fresh sheet placed over me I would soon begin
to see words, sentences, and signatures, all in my own handwriting. Yet
I could not decipher any of the words, and this fact dismayed me, for I
fir