The King In Yellow

“Who is this for?” I asked.
Haw­berk ex­plained, that in ad­di­tion to the treas­ures of ar­mour in the Met­ro­pol­itan Mu­seum of which he had been ap­poin­ted ar­mourer, he also had charge of sev­eral col­lec­tions be­long­ing to rich am­a­teurs.

Then she asked me in her soft quaint ac­cent how I had passed the night, and whether I was very much in­con­veni­enced by wear­ing the clothes which old Pela­gie had put there for me while I slept. I looked at my own clothes and shoes, dry­ing in the sun by the garden-wall, and hated them. What hor­rors they were com­pared with the grace­ful cos­tume which I now wore! I told her this laugh­ing, but she agreed with me very ser­i­ously.

“We will throw them away,” she said in a quiet voice.

For some time I tossed about the bed try­ing to get the sound of his voice out of my ears, but could not. It filled my head, that mut­ter­ing sound, like thick oily smoke from a fat-ren­der­ing vat or an odour of noi­some de­cay. And as I lay and tossed about, the voice in my ears seemed more dis­tinct, and I began to un­der­stand the words he had muttered. They came to me slowly as if I had for­got­ten them, and at last I could make some sense out of the sounds. It was this:

“Have you found the Yel­low Sign?”

“Have you found the Yel­low Sign?”

“Have you found the Yel­low Sign?”

I sat and tried to col­lect my thoughts. My first sen­sa­tion was like that of a very young child badly hurt, when it catches its breath be­fore cry­ing out

Oh, thou who burn’st in heart for those who burn
In Hell, whose fires thy­self shall feed in turn;
How long be cry­ing—‘Mercy on them.’ God!
Why, who art thou to teach and He to learn?

I do not deny that he was ec­cent­ric; the mania he had for keep­ing that cat and teas­ing her un­til she flew at his face like a de­mon, was cer­tainly ec­cent­ric

This is the thing that troubles me, for I can­not for­get Car­cosa where black stars hang in the heav­ens; where the shad­ows of men’s thoughts lengthen in the af­ter­noon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear forever the memory of the Pal­lid Mask