The Weird Picture

by John R. Carling

Angelo was mad!

Mad! Why had I not guessed this before? A thousand circumstances—curious facial expressions, odd sayings, tricks of gesture—came welling up from the depths of the past. Trivial, considered apart, in the aggregate they were significant, and tended to confirm my terrible discovery.

This revelation of Angelo's character imparted a fresh element of horror to my situation, and reduced to a minimum my chances of escape. Angelo sane might perhaps be diverted from his deadly purpose by the thought that discovery would be certain to attend the commission of his crime. But no such reason could prevail with a madman.

Flinging back his dark locks with a defiant gesture, the maniac fixed his glittering eye on me, and commenced to chant some Italian refrain composed in a very mournful key, keeping time to the air with the motions of his hand. I recognised the refrain. I had heard it once at Rivoli. It was a funeral hymn.

The foreign words imperfectly comprehended by me, the plaintive character of the refrain, united to the melancholy voice of the maniac, made this singing the most awful and unearthly thing I had ever heard, thrilling me to the very centre with the most eerie sensations. Every now and then he would pause to take a drink from a spirit-flask, resuming his wild song immediately afterwards. Usually a foe to intoxicants, he was now taking draughts of brandy in a reckless fashion, and I knew that he was working himself up for his fiendish task. The cold grey cell, the dim light, the gibbering thing at the table chanting my death song, formed a picture that has lived in my memory ever since, and often have I started from sleep with a cry of terror, shivering at the recollection of this night.

The cell had been gradually growing brighter, and at last on one side of the casement, through the tangles of ivy, appeared the silver arc of the moon whose arrowy beams slanted to the floor, adding a still greater sense of weirdness to the scene. The moon seemed to have a disturbing effect upon the artist's disordered mind, for he turned uneasily to the casement.

"Too much light. Too much light. I hate this silvery glare," and raising his arms he exclaimed tragically, "Oh, Endymion, why sleepest thou? Rise with thy white arms and draw Cynthia down to thy embrace."

As he spoke the moon actually was veiled by a passing cloud.

"I knew he would obey me," he exclaimed triumphantly. "Am not I lord of the night and of its shadows?"

Had there remained in my mind any doubt as to his sanity this absurd effusion would have effectually removed it. The sound of the church clock chiming the half hour now smote on my ears. If the maniac adhered to his threat I had but thirty minutes left to live, and I concentrated all my faculties upon the difficulties of my position. My uncle must by this time have returned with Sir Hugh, and on finding myself as well as the keys of the Nuns' Tower and the gallery missing, would guess where I was and they might even now be on their way to seek me and to arrest the artist. If they were listening outside they would hear Angelo's voice and would understand the peril I was in. They could not easily force the door, nor, if they had any suspicion of the artist's insanity, would they be so rash as to try, but one blow would shatter the window and give them instant admission into the tower.