“Poe,” said the other in a musing tone. “That name, too, is not wholly unfamiliar to me.” Following another brief interval during which he appeared to be engaged in a furious inner debate, he exhaled a sigh of resignation, took one step backward from the entranceway, and threw the door open to its widest extent. “Perhaps I have been overly precipitous. Come, gentlemen—enter. Hurry! Hurry! The air is abominably cold and damp, and I do not wish to be exposed to such a pernicious draft!”

In response to these proddings, Crockett and I quickly crossed the threshold into that mansion of gloom, whereupon the pallid gentleman—who, I had already surmised, was none other than the proprietor himself, Mr. Roger Asher—immediately slammed the door shut behind us.

“This way, gentlemen,” said the singular individual as he preceded us down a long, shadowy corridor. Its lofty walls were hung with dark, tattered draperies whose rich (if badly moth-eaten) fabric was wrought with a fantastic network of arabesque figures and wild, filigreed designs.

Ushering us into a vast and gloomy drawing room, our cadaverous host gestured towards two massive, ebony chairs that rested on a frayed carpet of Saxony material before a glowing fireplace. Doffing my hat and travelling cloak, I lowered myself into one of these furnishings, while Crockett settled into its mate. Asher, in the meantime, stepped to the fireplace to stir the smoldering embers with a poker—thus affording me an opportunity to glance about the great, dismal chamber.

Its dimensions measured, according to my estimate, no less than thirty by twenty-five feet. The floorboards were of ancient oak, darkened nearly to blackness with age; the ceiling—likewise of a gloomy-looking oak—was lofty, vaulted, and elaborately fretted with the wildest and most grotesque specimens of a semi-Gothic, semi-Druidical style.

The wall opposing the doorway through which we had entered was dominated by a tall, crimson-paned window, framed by voluminous curtains, also of a distinct, if somewhat faded, crimson hue. Feeble gleams of scarlet light made their way through the trellised panes and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects surrounding me. My eyes, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter corners of the chamber, which were steeped in shadow and which appeared to be occupied by a pair of motionless sentinels. These latter—so I subsequently discovered—were complete, if somewhat rusty, suits of medieval armor that had belonged to the Asher family for many generations. One of these figures stood at rigid attention, a ferocious-looking battle-ax, or halberd, clutched in its gauntleted right hand. The other had been arranged in a particularly warlike posture, its knees flexed, its hands grasping a long-handled pike that was pointed directly forward, as though the figure were poised for an attack.