“Make them move on, please!”
Then the sergeant followed the man into the empty room with its four blank walls; the latter led the officer straight to the party-wall that had lately been reconstructed by the landlord’s orders.
“What do you see there?” he demanded, pointing a finger at the white surface. The sergeant looked long and curiously at the spot indicated.
“I see a stain,” he announced at last, “a brown, or is it a red stain. What does that mean?... Are you poking fun at me? might you be wishing to pull my leg, I wonder. Now, to start with, I call upon you to explain yourself, why did you refuse to open that door to the young lady when she asked you?”
The workman shrugged his shoulders: “That’s not the question in hand,” he said quietly. “What do you think of that stain? I ought to tell you it made its appearance immediately after I had made a hole by driving in a nail.”
“I think nothing,” retorted the sergeant, “except that all this is nonsensical and incomprehensible balderdash.... Yes, and that I am going to take you to the station for having put the authorities to unnecessary trouble!”
The workman went on smiling: “Unnecessary!” he remarked; “do you think so?”
To disabuse the sergeant of such an idea, the other picked up a hammer and started hammering the wall round the little brown patch; the plaster broke away in little flakes that crumbled and fell in dust on the floor, and presently, under the rain of blows, the wall itself showed a crack. Suddenly a brick tumbled out, and the officer, who was watching the operation with eyes of amazement, sprang back with a cry of horror, while even the paper-hanger himself gave a little start of surprise.
Behind the plaster, in the inside of the wall, which was of considerable thickness, appeared an appalling sight! It was a human head, wan and livid, a man’s head with features streaked and spotted by the discolorations of death!
The sergeant gazed at the workman in indescribable agitation. “What is it?” he asked, “what is it? I call upon you to tell me what it is?”