The bottom was reached in safety after the usual doleful crunching
and creaking of the timber, and Paul sat down on the bottom step,
with his candle, to rest and quiet himself, before proceeding with
his work upon the door. A dead stillness reigned all about him,
broken only by the occasional resettling of the steps above his head,
but which, to his excited brain, was like the report of a pistol;
still even this ceased in a few minutes, and the silence was
undisturbed. He now made a careful examination of the door. It was
very heavy, and solid. Holding his candle close against the crack, he
could see, to his surprise, that it was bolted upon the inside.
Placing his ear close against the keyhole, he listened, but it was
silent as a tomb within; and how the door became fastened upon the
inside was inexplicable, unless indeed there was another outlet,
which from his examination of the building had seemed improbable.
Then, taking out his knife, he stuck it into the wood in various
directions to ascertain the condition of its preservation. The door
itself was in an excellent state; but in examining the lintel, the
blade of his knife suddenly sank into the rotten wood up to the
handle. Here, then, was the place to begin operations, and
fortunately it was on the side from which the door opened. Henley had
soon dug away a great segment of decayed wood, exposing the bolt
clearly to view. Then taking the hinge which he had brought with him,
and slipping the small end between the bolt and the frame of the
door, he used it as a lever to pry against the bolt within. The iron
was so old and rusty, and his purchase so poor, that he only
succeeded in making a rasping sound where the two metals scraped
against each other, and so stopped, discouraged. Presently he
bethought him of his handkerchief, which he wrapped carefully around
the end of the hinge, and thus not only gained a better purchase,
increasing his leverage, but was able to operate without the
slightest sound. It was a long time before the bolt moved, but to his
intense gratification it did move at last, and Henley took a fresh
grip upon his hinge. Backward and forward he worked his lever, and
with each turn the old bolt slipped back a little. At last he could
see the end of it, and then it was clear of the frame entirely. He
had expected no difficulty in opening the door when the hinge was
once slipped, but to his surprise it was still immovable. He pulled
and tugged and pushed, but it would not budge; then suddenly, just as
he was about to give up, it came tumbling down upon him, so that he
was barely able to save it from falling against the stairs with a
terrible crash, but fortunately caught it upon his shoulder, and
lowered it to the floor without a sound. Imagine his surprise in
going to what he now believed to be the open portal, to find that the
doorway had been bricked up from within, and that the door itself had
simply been the back of a solid wall. Naturally, he was disappointed
at finding himself no nearer the inner chamber than before. A careful
examination of the masonry showed that the work of bricking up the
entrance had undoubtedly been done from the other side, and after the
door had been closed and bolted. This was evidenced from the fact
that there was no mortar next the door, against the smooth inner
surface of which the bricks had been closely laid. Henley worked his
hinge between some of the looser joints, and found, just as he
expected, that the mortar had been laid from within. By degrees he
managed to wedge one of the bricks out of its place, and then pulled
it bodily from the wall. The inner surface was plastered over. He
tried another, which he got out more easily, and it told the same
tale. Then he went to work in earnest, and had soon dug a hole large
enough to admit his body. Leaning over into the aperture, with his
candle at arm's length, the place looked dark and empty, with faint
masses of lighter shadow. Then, with a certain indescribable awe,
Henley commenced crawling through the breach. Stepping upon an
earthern floor, he found himself in a vault-like chamber--damp,
mouldy, and foul of atmosphere. He glanced hurriedly about, and then
turned to examine the wall through which he had come. Just as he had
surmised, the bricks had been laid from the inner side, and plastered
over within. The person who had done the work must have had some
other means of escape. This set him to wondering where the other
entrance could be, and to a careful search around the wall; but there
was no door, no window, nor opening of any kind. How had the work
been done? While he was wondering, he stumbled over something in the
floor, and, recovering, threw back his head, holding his candle high
above it. He was startled by the sight of what appeared to be four
shadowy human faces, looking directly at him from above.
Instinctively he sought his revolver, but before drawing it perceived
that what he had taken for living people were simply four portraits,
of the most remarkable character he had ever beheld. Paul stared in
bewilderment at the sight before him. The pictures were so old, their
canvases so rotten and mildewed and stained with the accumulated
fungi of time and darkness that it was only by degrees that the
intention of the artist became manifest. In the hall and other
apartments of the old house, Henley thought he had seen the most
original and inexplicable pictures ever painted; but here, buried
forever from the sight of human eyes, were the most dreadful
countenances ever transcribed from life or the imagination of man.
Torture was clearly depicted upon each face; but not torture alone,
for horror, fright, and mental agony were strangely blended in each.
Not a face that looked down upon him from those antiquated frames but
bore that agonized, heart-broken, terrified expression. Paul was
paralyzed; a kind of mesmeric spell held him to the spot, so that he
could not remove his eyes from the uncanny scene before him. Then a
wild desire to be rid of the place forever seized him, and he stepped
backward. At the same minute he observed for the first time what
looked like some faded letters painted upon the wall directly beneath
the four mysterious portraits. Examining these with his candle, he
saw that they formed the words: "The last of the Guirs."