Probably the mysterious circumstances surrounding the destruction by fire of an abandoned house on a hill, along the Seekonk, in a sparsely populated district between Washington and Red bridges, they will not ever know. The police were harassed by the usual number of cranks who offered to provide reports on the matter. No more insistent than Arthur Phillips, the descendant of an old family of the East Side, a long resident on Angell Street. It was a strange young man, yet formal, prepared an account of the events, he said, led to the fire. Although police spoke to all persons mentioned in the story of Mr. Phillips, did not get any confirmation. Only served to support the claim of Mr. Phillips's statement a librarian at the Athenaeum, in the sense that, yes, Mr. Phillips had met there with Miss Rose Dexter. The following is his story.
I
At night, the streets of any city on the East Coast providing the passer night visions of the strange and terrible, of the macabre and the unusual: under cover of darkness, out of the cracks and crevices in the attic and alleys of the city those human beings who, for reasons shadowy and remote, take shelter during the day in his gray niches. They are deformed, the lonely, the sick, the elderly, the persecuted, and those lost souls who are always looking for themselves under the cloak of night, that it is more beneficial than I ever can be for them the cold daylight. Are wounded by life, the maimed men and women who have never recovered from the traumas of childhood experiences or have sought not permitted to man. In any place where human society has concentrated for a period of time, there they are, if only they see emerge in the hours of darkness, like moths to move around their dens for brief hours before flee again when there is sunlight.
Having been a lonely boy who left to do what he wanted, because of my persistent lack of health, soon developed the habit of wandering at night, at first only on Angell Street and the neighborhood where I lived during my childhood, and then little by little, in a wider circle of my native Providence. During the day, if my health permitted, was walking by the Seekonk River from the city to the open field, or when I was strong, playing carefully chosen with colleagues in a "clubhouse" built in a wooded area not far from the city. I also enjoyed reading, and spent long hours in the voluminous library of my grandfather. Read without discrimination, and therefore assimilated a variety of skills, from Greek philosophy to the history of the English monarchy, the secrets of ancient alchemy to Niels Bohr's experiments in the science of the Egyptian papyri regional studies of Thomas Hardy. My grandfather was very catholic in their tastes in books disdain specialization, and everything just kept buying what he claimed was good, this represented in the set of readings, an unprecedented and often bewildering variety.
But the city at night exceeded all others, walking was what he preferred to anything else, and out at night, during the years of my childhood and my adolescence, during which tried-for sporadic illness prevented my attendance at school-just myself and I became more and more lonely. I could not say now what I was looking so earnestly in the city during the night, what attracted me to the dimly lit streets, why Benefit roamed the street and around the street gloomy Poe almost unknown in the vast Providence, which hoped to see in the faces of other pedestrians furtive nocturnal gliding and scurried through the dark streets and alleys of the city. Perhaps it was to escape the realities of the day more intense, full of insatiable curiosity about the secrets of city life that only the night could discover. When I finally finished my secondary school, I was expected to devote to other pursuits. But it was not. My health was too precarious to guarantee tuition at Brown University, where I would have liked to go to continue my studies. This restriction served only to increase my solitary occupations: duplicated my hours of reading and increased the time for strolling at night, with compensation to sleep during daylight hours. However, I managed to lead a normal, not left my widowed mother or my aunt, with whom he lived. My fellow youth turned away from me, but I found Rose Dexter, a descendant of the first English families who settled in Providence, black eyes, singularly attractive proportions and features of great beauty. whom he persuaded to share my night walks.
With her continued exploration of the Providence nightlife, with a new attraction: the desire to teach Rose everything I had discovered in my trips around town. At first we were in the old University, and continue to find there every afternoon, and from their front porches at night introduced us to the city. What she started as an occurrence of the time, soon became a habit. I showed as much desire to know the hidden passages and roads had been unused for many years, and was soon at home in the middle of the night city, like me. Neither liked inconsequential talks, which demonstrated the extent to which we complemented.
For several months we have been exploring Providence in this way, when one night, on Benefit Street, a man with a coat to the knee, a torn and wrinkled clothes, approached us. I had seen before around the corner: it was within walking distance of us, stopped on the sidewalk, and watched him as I passed him. I was shocked, because his face with black eyes and a mustache, and the untamed hair on the head without covering, familiar to me. Moreover, in passing, he intends to follow. At last we reached, I touched his shoulder and talked to me.
"Sir," he said, could you tell me how to go to the cemetery where he was Poe?
I explained and then moved by a sudden impulse, I suggested that we could accompany him wherever he wanted to go. Before I fully realized what had happened, we were all three walking together. I noticed right away how that individual air teller looked over at my companion. But any resentment that might arise in me was dismissed because he recognized that the interests of that strange was harmless: it was colder and passionate critical. I also took the opportunity to examine more closely what may, at times shooting in the street light illuminated the way by which we passed, and I worried more and more certain that he knew or had ever known.
dressed entirely in black except the white shirt and light tie Windsor. His clothes were wrinkled, as if he had taken a long time without having dealt with it, but at first glance was not dirty. His forehead was broad, almost vaulted under it looked certain obsession with her dark eyes narrowed and his face to end up in a small, stiff chin. Her hair was longer as was fashionable among the people of my age, and yet seemed to belong to that same generation appeared to be no more than five years older than me. But definitely, your dress was not to my generation, though he looked again, seemed cut with a pattern of an earlier generation.
- Are you a stranger in Providence? I asked.
step "I said immediately.
- Are you interested in Poe? He nodded.
- What do you know him? I asked.
"Very little," he said. Could you tell me about it?
No needed to tell me twice. Then he let out a biographical point of the father of detective stories and master of macabre tales, whose work I admired for a long time. Cité simply his romance with Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, as referred to Providence and visit with Mrs. Whitman to the cemetery to which we were going. I noticed that listened rapt attention, and seemed to be recording everything in his mind told him. But he could not deduct from his face expressionless if you liked to tobacco or disliked, or what might have interest in it.
Meanwhile, Rose was aware of attraction which caused, but did not feel embarrassed, perhaps because he sensed that it was due to an interest distinct from love. Only when you ask her what her name was, I realized we did not know his name. We gave that of "Mr Allan." Hearing this, Rose smiled almost imperceptibly, saw her smile as we walked under a street lamp. Once we knew our names, our companion did not seem interested in anything else, and silently we finally arrived at the cemetery. Mr Allan thought it would come, but I had that purpose and only intended to re-locate to day. It was a sensible conclusion: was attractive to me at that hour for having kicked often at night, but offered little charm to an outsider, unable to see anything in the dark. We parted at the entrance, and Rose and I continued.
"I've seen this man somewhere before," he told Rose when we had gone far enough so he could not hear us. But I can not remember where. Maybe in the library.
"It must have been in the library," said Rose with a laugh that it so often broken. In a portrait on the wall.
- Vamos! What? I shouted.
- But I'm sure you noticed the resemblance, Arthur! "He said. Even its name. It looks like Edgar Allan Poe.
Indeed, it seemed. As Rose put it, I realized the great similarity, even on your clothes, and then I qualified as harmless Mr Allan Poe idolatrous. A man so obsessed with his idol was her style, even with an old-fashioned clothes. Another strange specimens of the human race that night streets of the city!
"Well, is the most bizarre we've found since we started our walks," I said. His hand squeezed my arm.
-Arthur, do not feel something, something strange that emanated from him?
"I guess that something 'strange' shines for all of us who seek the darkness," I said. In a way, we tend to create our own reality.
But as he answered, I realized what she meant. There was no need for it eagerly sought clarification on the words of explanation he gave then. Yes, there was something odd about Mr. Allan, and what I had was a deep lie. You could see, now I was clear and agreed, in a number trivial things, but particularly in the lack of expression of his features. His speech, despite having been very talkative, had no intonation was almost mechanical. Had not smiled or had altered the expression of his face. He had spoken with a precision that suggested a departure from most men. Even showing the interest shown by clinical Rose was admiring. While aroused my curiosity, I grew up in a puff of apprehension. I preferred to bring the subject of our conversation in another direction and went with Rose to your home.
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