The sight that my eyes rested upon I shall not forget as long as ever I live!
Chapter Twenty Three.
Contains Another Revelation.
I stood still in horror, my eyes riveted upon the shrivelled human body. It was stretched out upon several chairs placed side by side. The sight was most gruesome.
Near it, upon the floor, was an ordinary packing-case, in the bottom of which a quantity of wood shavings had been pressed down, to form a sort of bed. At once I realised that this box had been prepared for the reception of the body.
It was about to be smuggled out of the house!
But how did it come to be there? Whose body was it? How long had it been dead? And how had the man—for I saw it was the body of a man, apparently a man of middle-age—come by his death?
It was not the sight of the Thing that had startled me, however, for I had expected to see it there.