ntire 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. A crimson
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, birdlike neck so as to direct his
gaze over the intervening table, fixed a gaping and concentrated stare
upon