Читать книгу The Perfect World. A romance of strange people and strange places онлайн

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There was around him a death-like stillness, and he realized that the buried cavern was far from the bottom of the shaft. Then he suddenly wondered where the air came from. There must be an inlet somewhere, he thought, for the air he was breathing, although stuffy, was quite pure. He walked round the walled up chamber—round and round—but there was nowhere a weak spot. He sat down and tried to think coherently, and laughed aloud in his agony, as he wondered whether he would go mad. He looked up suddenly, and in his weakness imagined that the roof was trying to dance with the floor. He tottered round the place, hardly able to keep his feet in his wild fancy that the floor was moving, and laughed hysterically as he knocked against a jutting piece of coal, and thought the roof had got him at last. Then he quieted a little, and in the semi-darkness the dead figure of Daniels seemed to rise from the place where it lay, and point at him a menacing finger.

In terror, Alan backed to the further side of the little chamber, his eyes distorted, his limbs trembling. He watched the figure come nearer—nearer—its long claw-like fingers were almost on his flesh—“Ah!” he shrieked—the fingers were touching him with a cold, slimy touch. He felt impelled to move forward—with the forefinger of the dead man pressed to his forehead. He walked fearfully onward—then his overwrought brain gave way entirely, and with another wild shriek, he fell to the floor in merciful unconsciousness.