“I was shocked and intrigued. I had a squatter who came here to read. I had a squatter who warmed himself at a fireplace. And the gold chair, how handsome it was, with its soft brown leather seat and back, and its crossed legs, and its ornately carved arms. One little test with my knife assured me that its simple frame was genuine gold. Same with the plate and cylinder which held the pens.

“ ‘Same as the mausoleum outside,’ I whispered. (I always talk out loud to myself when I’m confused.) ‘I have a squatter who likes gold.’

“And then there was the dark multicolored marble of the desk, and the simple iron frame that bore the marble’s weight.

“A squatter with taste, and intellectual interests! But how did he or she get here, and what had this to do with the attacks of dizziness I had felt as I proceeded? What had this to do with anything but trespassing, as far as I knew?

“I gazed about me at the open windows. I saw the stains of rain on the floor. I saw the flickering greenery. I felt faint again and batted at a mosquito that was trying to drive me mad.

“ ‘Just because this character has taste doesn’t mean he’s not upstairs waiting to kill you,’ I reminded myself.

“Then, going to the interior stairs, I called out:

“ ‘Hello the house!’

“There was no sound above. I was convinced the place was deserted. If the mysterious reader had been here the books would not have been so swollen.

“Nevertheless, I called out again, ‘Hello, Tarquin Blackwood here,’ and I went up slowly, listening for any sound from above.

“The second floor was much smaller and tighter than the first, but it was made of the same firm planks, and light came in not only from the barren arched windows but through the cupola above.

“But those details I scarcely noticed. Because this room was markedly different from the one below it in that it contained a loathsome and hideous sight.

“This was a set of rusted chains attached to the wall opposite the chimney, chains which obviously had no other purpose than the chaining of a human being. There were handcuffs and ankle cuffs on these chains, and beneath these idle witnesses to some abomination there was a thick dark syrupy-looking substance and the remnants of a human skull.

“I was disgusted beyond imagining. I was almost violently sick. I steadied myself. I stared at the black residue, this seeming tar, and at the skull, and then I made out what seemed like the disintegrating whitish powder of other bones. There was also the evidence of rotting cloth in the morass, and something glinting brightly though it was caught in the dark viscid tar.