Page:Weird Tales v01n01 (1923-03).djvu/120



OBERED on the instant—the padlock had clicked when Montresor passed the chain about my waist and thus fastened me to the wall—I stood upright in the little dungeon, the blood running cold in my veins.

With maniacal laughter, he withdrew from the niche, whipped a trowel from under his robe and began to wall up the narrow opening. I knew it was not a joke, a drunken jest. I saw that his drunkenness had fallen from him. The dying flambeau fell from my nerveless hand and cast a fitful bloody glow upon the whitened, dripping walls. I shook the chain frenziedly.

"For God's sake, Montresor!" I cried.

He replied with a horrible, mocking laugh, and, like a devil from hell, lifted his voice with mine to show that it was idle to call for help.

I had always distrusted Montresor. I knew him to be a serpent. He feared me and was jealous of my person and attainments. In spite of all his fawning and his smiles, I knew he hated me deeply for the injuries I had heaped upon him and for the open insults I had added to them. And yet I swear he had never in the slightest suspected that it was not Giovanna, the tenor, who was successful with his wife, but I!

"Fortunato!" he called, and his hoarse tone echoed in a ghastly way through the gloomy catacombs of his ancestors and re-echoed along the winding crypt.

I made no reply. Cold beads of fear started from my brow as I strained against the chain and listened to the soft thud of the stones he was building into the opening to make a tomb and the accompanying tinkle of his trowel. Even then, I admired, perforce, the cleverness with which he had secured his revenge.

It was the night of the carnival. He had found me in the streets, dazed with wine, and, pretending that he wanted my judgment on a cask of sherry, had lured my staggering feet into the gloomy passages under his palazzo. And he had brought me into this narrow niche in the castle walls to entomb me alive where no one would ever find me. It was clever!

My memory fails me now, but I doubt not I cried out many times for pity and mercy; and I take no shame in thinking this may have been so. I recall his words and his horrible mouthings as he worked with more haste and zeal than skill.

But I was a brave man always. I did not yield myself to fate. It was unthinkable. I, Fortunato, to die walled in by Montresor! I cursed him and his line. I wrenched at the chain with ferocious strength, more eager to have