I was deeply touched by the demeanour of Ham as the hours went by.  He wandered stealthily about the rooms like a lost being.  It was like matter sighing after, weeping over, spirit.  Prince Zaleski had never before withdrawn himself from the surveillance of this sturdy watchman, and his disappearance now was like a convulsion in their little cosmos.  Ham implored me repeatedly, if I could, to throw some light on the meaning of this catastrophe.  But I too was in the dark.  The Titanic frame of the Ethiopian trembled with emotion as in broken, childish words he told me that he felt instinctively the approach of some great danger to the person of his master.  So a day passed away, and then another.  On the next he roused me from sleep to hand me a letter which, on opening, I found to be from Zaleski.  It was hastily scribbled in pencil, dated ‘London, Nov. 14th,’ and ran thus: 

’For my body—­should I not return by Friday night—­you will, no doubt, be good enough to make search. Descend the river, keeping constantly to the left; consult the papyrus; and stop at the Descensus Aesopi. Seek diligently, and you will find.  For the rest, you know my fancy for cremation:  take me, if you will, to the crematorium of Pere-Lachaise. My whole fortune I decree to Ham, the Lybian.’

Ham was all for knowing the contents of this letter, but I refused to communicate a word of it.  I was dazed, I was more than ever perplexed, I was appalled by the frenzy of Zaleski.  Friday night!  It was then Thursday morning.  And I was expected to wait through the dreary interval uncertain, agonised, inactive!  I was offended with my friend; his conduct bore the interpretation of mental distraction.  The leaden hours passed all oppressively while I sought to appease the keenness of my unrest with the anodyne of drugged sleep.  On the next morning, however, another letter—­a rather massive one—­reached me.  The covering was directed in the writing of Zaleski, but on it he had scribbled the words:  ’This need not be opened unless I fail to reappear before Saturday.’  I therefore laid the packet aside unread.

I waited all through Friday, resolved that at six o’clock, if nothing happened, I should make some sort of effort.  But from six I remained, with eyes strained towards the doorway, until ten.  I was so utterly at a loss, my ingenuity was so entirely baffled by the situation, that I could devise no course of action which did not immediately appear absurd.  But at midnight I sprang up—­no longer would I endure the carking suspense.  I seized a taper, and passed through the door-way.  I had not proceeded far, however, when my light was extinguished.  Then I remembered with a shudder that I should have to pass through the whole vast length of the building in order to gain an exit.  It was an all but hopeless task in the profound darkness to thread my way through the labyrinth of halls and corridors, of tumble-down stairs, of bat-haunted vaults, of purposeless angles and involutions; but I proceeded with something of a blind obstinacy, groping my way with arms held out before me.  In this manner I had wandered on for perhaps a quarter of an hour, when my fingers came into distinct momentary contact with what felt like cold and humid human flesh.  I shrank back, unnerved as I already was, with a murmur of affright.