I had always distrusted Montresor. I knew him to be a serpent. He feared me and was jealous of my person and attainments. In spite of all his fawning and his smiles, I knew he hated me deeply for the injuries I had heaped upon him and for the open insults I had added to them. And yet I swear he had never in the slightest suspected that it was not Giovanna, the tenor, who was successful with his wife, but I!
“Fortunato!” he called, and his hoarse tone echoed in a ghastly way through the gloomy catacombs of his ancestors and re-echoed along the winding crypt.
I made no reply. Cold beads of fear started from my brow as I strained against the chain and listened to the soft thud of the stones he was building into the opening to make my tomb and the accompanying tinkle of his trowel. Even then, I admired, perforce, the cleverness with which he had secured his revenge.
It was the night of the carnival. He had found me in the streets, dazed with wine, and, pretending that he wanted my judgment on a cask of sherry, had lured my staggering feet into the gloomy passages under his palazzo. And he had brought me into this narrow niche in the castle walls to entomb me alive where no one would ever find me. It was clever!
My memory fails me now, but I doubt not I cried out many times for pity and mercy; and I take no shame in thinking this may have been so. I recall his words and his horrible mouthings as he worked with more haste and zeal than skill.
But I was a brave man always. I did not yield myself to fate. It was unthinkable. I, Fortunato, to die walled in by Montresor! I cursed him and his line. I wrenched at the chain with ferocious strength, more eager to have him by the throat than to be free to live. I called upon all the saints and particularly to my patron saint. You shall see that I was not unheard.
The wall grew high—to his breast—and in the light of his flambeau set somewhere in the wall outside I could see Montresor’s sweating face as he labored with the stones.
Suddenly he thrust his torch through the opening, now no larger than his head—and to deceive him I prostrated myself upon the floor and laughed the laugh of a dying man.
I heard the thud of another stone, and looked up quickly. My flambeau had died out: Montresor’s had disappeared. And there was no opening! I was in a tomb of stone!
Absolute darkness surrounded me, and the walls seemed to press in upon me like icy blankets. And silence as absolute as the darkness reigned.