And then he laughed at himself and tried to lower his arm. It wouldn’t come. He tugged and he could feel his coat sleeve beginning to give. The tap continued its regular drip, drip, and his nerves became strung and he reached his free hand in his pocket and drew out a match and lit it upon the seat of his pants, regardless.
Then he saw the trouble instantly. His arm was caught by a long iron hook suspended from the ceiling. He looked around and saw the room was full of such hooks.
“Wuuh!”
The ejaculation came naturally. He was in the room where they had once hung the cadavers. His coat was caught upon a cadaver hook! And with the realization his reflexes began working automatically. He leaped and freed his arm and struck his head upon the ceiling.
Then he leaned against the wall and shivered. The feel of the burning match against his flesh brought him to, like a pain.
“Fool!” he muttered reprovingly and his perspiring body was seared dry by a consuming shame. “Lighting matches in a basement with escaping gas and getting hysterical over rats. Get out of here!”
He regained the corridor and proceeded quickly in the direction of the door. When his hand was upon the handle he stopped for a moment to consider and get himself together.
Was Snod safe in this building? Had those feelings he had just been through been entirely hysterical or were they partly occasioned by the presence of the murderer, somewhere, in that basement?
He checked over it all step by step and decided that they were pure ... might as well admit it ... pure hysteria. An innate fear of dead people, which he knew perfectly well he had had ever since that boy in Mexico took so long to die when he shot him fifteen years ago. And he had glassed his eyes on him when he finally did go.
Nobody but Snod was in this building. A murderer left tracks just like any other man and he had examined all of the tracks.