Thereupon, bidding his companions to await his return, he arose, and, removing his cocked hat with its parti-colored ribbons from its peg upon the wall where it hung, he followed his interlocutor down the staircase to the street below.
Here he discovered a very handsome cabriolet with red wheels, into which, at the bidding of his companion, our young gentleman stepped, the other following him and closing the door with a crash. Thereupon the driver instantly whipped up his horses, and drove away at an extremely rapid rate of speed.
The curtains of the window had been closed, so that our young lawyer was entirely at a loss as to whither he was being conveyed, excepting that the cabriolet continued rattling over the stony streets, and that it turned several corners at an undiminished rate of speed. Nor did his companion speak a word until the vehicle was drawn up to the sidewalk with a suddenness that nearly precipitated our hero from his seat. Almost instantly the door was opened, and the attorney, following his conductor, stepped out upon the sidewalk at what appeared to be the back gate of a considerable garden that partly enclosed the back buildings of a large and imposing edifice standing at a little distance, its outlines nearly lost in the obscurity of the night beyond.
What with the many turnings of the conveyance that had brought him thither, and what with the fruitless surmises and speculations as to his destination, Griscombe was as entirely at a loss to tell whither he had been fetched or what was the situation of the building he now beheld as he would have been, had he been transported into another world. Nor did his companion give him time for surmises or suppositions; for, drawing forth from his breeches pocket a key, he opened the gate, and immediately introduced our hero through a dark and wind-swept garden and by the back door into the kitchen of the residence, which was illuminated by the light of a single candle.
With no more illumination than this latter could afford, the stranger thence led the way through the dark but richly furnished spaces of a silent and sleeping house of palatial dimensions, until at the further extremity of the building he finally conducted our young lawyer into a large and nobly appointed library. Here a lingering fire of coals still burned in the marble fireplace, diffusing a grateful warmth throughout the apartment, at the same time lending a soft and ruddy illumination by means of which our hero was able with but little difficulty to distinguish the stateliness and profusion of his surroundings. The heavy and luxuriant folds of rich and heavy tapestry sheltered the windows; soft and luxuriant rugs of Oriental pattern lay spread in quantities upon the floor; the walls were hung with paintings glowing with color and of the most exquisite outlines; beautifully bound books crowded the cases that surrounded the room, and the marble mantel glistened with ormolu and crystal adornments.
Meantime his conductor, having lit a quantity of wax candles upon the mantel-shelf, and having laid aside the mask that for all this while had concealed his identity, turned at last to our hero a face whose lineaments, though extremely handsome, were as pale as wax and furrowed with the lines of a most consuming care. A quantity of hair as black as ebony curled about his alabaster forehead, and he fixed upon his visitor a pair of large and sombre eyes whose piercing brilliancy betrayed an illimitable anxiety of soul. Beautiful, however, as was the countenance presented to the observer, there was in the hardness of its lines and the thin and compressed nervousness of the lips a stern relentlessness of expression that the smouldering and sinister fire which glowed in the eyes alone might be needed to enflame into a conflagration of rage and of cruelty.
Having motioned Griscombe to a soft and luxuriant seat upon the other side of the fire, himself leaning with an elegant ease against the mantel-shelf, this strange and singular being composed himself as though with a considerable effort, and addressed to his listener the following extraordinary discourse, without any preface whatever:—
"You will doubtless be considerably surprised," he said, "to learn that you behold before you one who feels well assured that he is already condemned to an unknown death that shall visit him perhaps within the course of a day or two—perhaps within the course of a few hours. I know perfectly well that you may be inclined even to doubt the truth of so extraordinary a statement or to question the entire sanity of one who propounds so startling a statement. Nor can I even enter into such an account of my miserable circumstances as shall convince you at once of my truthfulness and of my sanity, without involving you also in the danger in which I lie entrapped. Should you be the recipient of my confidence, certain death would probably await you, as I believe it awaits me; and you would thus be prevented from carrying out the important commission that I am now about to impose upon you."