With this severe but not-unmerited verdict the present reviewer is wholly in accord. Mrs. Poe will always be a welcome sight on the theatrical stages of our city. But as for her husband, we would feel intensely grateful if we were to see him perform—nevermore!

Still shaking violently in every limb, I sank back into my chair, while a crowd of tumultuous thoughts rushed hurriedly through my mind. Precisely how long I remained seated at my writing table, I cannot, with any degree of certainty, state. There was a mad disorder in my brain—a tumult unappeasable. I had managed to resolve one crucial element of the puzzle. But the mystery as a whole remained as bewildering—as maddeningly elusive—as ever.

Of my principal deduction—that the ghastly series of murders was somehow related to long-ago theatrical events involving my own family—there could no longer be the slightest doubt. But in another vital respect, my speculations had proven to be wholly erroneous. The gruesome string of killings was not—as I had supposed—related to my mother. Rather, as was sufficiently clear from the above-quoted review, they were in some way connected to a severe public humiliation suffered—nearly a quarter-century before!—by my father.

About this deplorable being I possessed relatively little information. Whatever curiosity I may once have felt in his regard had long since been expunged by my overwhelming sense of bitterness—by my utter disdain for a man so lost to honor and decency that he had abandoned his young wife and babes to the cruel buffets of the world. The few facts I did know were these:

The namesake of that celebrated personage who had served his country so ably during the Revolutionary War, the younger David Poe had, in his early manhood, trained to be a lawyer. Even then, however, he apparently harbored dreams of becoming an actor—dreams excited to an even greater pitch when, at the age of twenty-five, he attended a performance of Richard Gilmore’s thenpopular comedy The Market Lass, and was struck with the charms of its leading actress, Miss Elizabeth Arnold. By the following year, he had abandoned his legal studies to pursue the histrionic calling. Endowed with a strong, melodious voice, a supple physique, and a burning ambition, the young man possessed attributes well suited for the stage. Unfortunately, he was also prone to a paralyzing fear that often rendered him entirely incapacitated while performing.