"Murder," said Garrett.
"Murder most foul," said Stendahl.
A woman screamed. Miss Pope ran up, her face the color of a cheese. "The most horrid thing just happened! I saw Miss Blunt strangled by an ape and stuffed up a chimney!"
They looked and saw the long yellow hair trailing down from the flue. Garrett cried out.
"Horrid!" sobbed Miss Pope, and then ceased crying. She blinked and turned. "Miss Blunt!"
"Yes," said Miss Blunt, standing there.
"But I just saw you crammed up the flue!"
"No," laughed Miss Blunt. "A robot of myself. A clever facsimile!"
"But, but ... "
"Don't cry darling. I'm quite all right. Let me look at myself. Well, so there I am! Up the chimney. Like you said. Isn't that funny?"
Miss Blunt walked away, laughing.
"Have a drink, Garrett?"
"I believe I will. That unnerved me. My God, what a place. This does deserve tearing down. For a moment there ... "
Garrett drank.
Another scream. Mr. Steffens, borne upon the shoulders of four white rabbits, was carried down a flight of stairs which magically appeared in the floor. Into a pit went Mr. Steffens, where, bound and tied, he was left to face the advancing razor steel of a great pendulum which now whirled down, down, closer and closer to his outraged body.
"Is that me down there?" said Mr. Steffens, appearing at Garrett's elbow. He bent over the pit. "How strange, how odd, to see yourself die."
The pendulum made a final stroke.
"How realistic," said Mr. Steffens, turning away.
"Another drink, Mr. Garrett?"
"Yes, please."
"It won't be long. The Dismantlers will be here."
"Thank God!"
And for a third time, a scream.
"What now?" said Garrett apprehensively.
"It's my turn," said Miss Drummond. "Look."
And a second Miss Druxnmond, shrieking, was nailed into a coffin and thrust into the raw earth under the floor.
"Why, I remember that," gasped the Investigator of Moral Climates. "From the old forbidden books. The Premature Burial. And the others. The Pit, the Pendulum, and the ape, the chimney, the Murders in the Rue Morgue. In a book I burned, yes!"
"Another drink, Garrett. Here, hold your glass steady."
"My lord, you have an imagination, haven't you?"
They stood and watched five others die, one in the mouth of a dragon, the others thrown off into the black tarn, sinking and vanishing.