The street, so crowded with curious onlookers during my initial visit, was now all but deserted—its sole visible occupant being a small, towheaded lad who was in the process of tying a tin can to the tail of an emaciated mongrel pup as our carriage drew to a halt before the dilapidated edifice. As Crockett dismounted and affixed the reins of our vehicle to the warped and weather-beaten hitching post, the kneeling boy cast an intense, quizzical gaze at the frontiersman. All at once, his visage assumed a look of almost comically exaggerated astonishment. Releasing the struggling dog from his hold, the young boy leapt to his feet—dashed to the end of the street—and disappeared around the corner.

Climbing down from the carriage, I mounted the stoop of the squat, red-brick building with Crockett at my side and tried the door. As anticipated, it was unlocked. Stepping inside, we paused for a moment in the malodorous entranceway, allowing our eyes to adapt to the extreme gloominess of the interior.

At length, with Crockett in the lead, we proceeded down the cramped and murky hallway to the bedroom. At my first glimpse of this insufferably squalid chamber—a site now forever linked in my mind with the unspeakable horrors I had encountered there—my frame was seized by a paroxysm of dread. Apart from the yawning hole in the floorboards, where Montague’s horribly mutilated corpse had once lain, the room looked much the same as it had when I had previously entered it—which is to say, in a state of the most complete and chaotic disorder. The countless, brittle copies of the Baltimore Daily Advertiser—the newspaper to which Montague had been such a frequent contributor—lay scattered all across the floor, having evidently been completely undisturbed since my last visit.

As Crockett made a brief, exploratory circuit of the room, I reached into my pants pocket and extracted a large, freshly laundered handkerchief that I had made certain to bring. Folding it in half, so that it formed a large, isosceles triangle, I raised it to my face, brought the corners around the back of my head, and affixed them into a knot. I then adjusted the front of the handkerchief so that it hung down from the bridge of my nose and entirely covered the lower portion of my face, its pointed end depending to the bottom of my chin.

No sooner had I completed this operation than Crockett—whose back had been turned to me for the past several moments—looked my way and gave a start of surprise.

“Good land, Poe! Are you fixing to rob a bank?”

In a voice somewhat muffled by the double layer of fabric overhanging my mouth, I replied thusly: “I am merely taking a precautionary measure against the noxious conditions which precipitated such a violent respiratory outburst during our earlier investigation.”