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Page 52
"Now, what do you expect to see? A ghost--a phantom? And in what shape,
what guise?"
"A skeleton," answers Lady Laughton, returning his laugh; and with the
words the door is pushed open, and they enter the room _en masse_.
The sunlight is stealing in through the narrow window holes and faintly
lighting up the dismal room.
What is that in yonder corner, the very corner where Sir Adrian's
almost lifeless body had been found? Is this a trick, a delusion of the
brain? What is this thing huddled together, lying in a heap--a ghastly,
ragged, filthy heap, before their terrified eyes? And why does this
charnel-house smell infect their nostrils? They stagger. Even the strong
men grow pale and faint, for there, before them, gaunt, awful,
unmistakable, lies a skeleton!
Lady Laughton's jesting words have come true--a fleshless corpse indeed
meets their stricken gaze!
Sir Adrian, having hurriedly asked one of the men of the party to
remove Lady Dynecourt and her friends, he and Captain Ringwood proceed
to examine the grewsome body that lies upon the floor; yet, though they
profess to each other total ignorance of what it can be, there is in
their hearts a miserable certainty that appalls them. Is this to be the
end of the mystery? Truly had spoken Ethel Ringwood when she had alluded
to Arthur Dynecourt as being "out of their world," for it is his remains
they are bending over, as a few letters lying scattered about testify
only too plainly.
Caught in the living grave he had destined for his cousin was Arthur
Dynecourt on the night of Sir Adrian's release. The lamp had dropped
from his hand in the first horror of his discovery that his victim had
escaped him. Then followed the closing of the fatal lock and his
insensibility.
On recovering from his swoon, he had no doubt endured a hundred-fold
more tortures than had the innocent Sir Adrian, as his conscience must
have been unceasingly racking and tearing him.
And not too soon either could the miserable end have come. Every pang he
had designed for his victim was his. Not one was spared! Cold and hunger
and the raging fever of thirst were his, and withal a hopelessness more
intolerable than aught else--a hopelessness that must have grown in
strength as the interminable days went by.
And then came death--an awful lingering death, whilst the loathsome rats
had finished the work which starvation and death had begun, and now all
that remained of Arthur Dynecourt was a heap of bones!
They hush the matter up well as they can, but it is many days before
Florence or her husband, or any of their guests, forget the dreadful
hour in which they discovered the unsightly remains of him who had been
overtaken by a just and stern retribution.
THE END.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Haunted Chamber, by "The Duchess"
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