There was another door in the
room, but it was locked on the outer side; and with what place it
communicated, he knew not.
His fears or evil conscience reproduced this door in all his dreams. He
dreamed that a dreadful secret was connected with it; a secret which he
knew, and yet did not know, for although he was heavily responsible
for it, and a party to it, he was harassed even in his vision by
a distracting uncertainty in reference to its import. Incoherently
entwined with this dream was another, which represented it as the
hiding-place of an enemy, a shadow, a phantom; and made it the business
of his life to keep the terrible creature closed up, and prevent it
from forcing its way in upon him. With this view Nadgett, and he, and a
strange man with a bloody smear upon his head (who told him that he
had been his playfellow, and told him, too, the real name of an old
schoolmate, forgotten until then), worked with iron plates and nails to
make the door secure; but though they worked never so hard, it was all
in vain, for the nails broke, or changed to soft twigs, or what was
worse, to worms, between their fingers; the wood of the door splintered
and crumbled, so that even nails would not remain in it; and the iron
plates curled up like hot paper.
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