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After a long pause I resumed my meal, but with my ears still vigilant.
Presently I heard something else, very faint and low.
I sat as if frozen in my attitude. Though it was faint and low,
it moved me more profoundly than all that I had hitherto heard of
the abominations behind the wall. There was no mistake this time in
the quality of the dim, broken sounds; no doubt at all of their source.
For it was groaning, broken by sobs and gasps of anguish.
It was no brute this time; it was a human being in torment!
As I realised this I rose, and in three steps had crossed the room,
seized the handle of the door into the yard, and flung it open
before me.
"Prendick, man! Stop!" cried Montgomery, intervening.
A startled deerhound yelped and snarled. There was blood, I saw,
in the sink,--brown, and some scarlet--and I smelt the peculiar
smell of carbolic acid. Then through an open doorway beyond,
in the dim light of the shadow, I saw something bound painfully
upon a framework, scarred, red, and bandaged; and then blotting
this out appeared the face of old Moreau, white and terrible.
In a moment he had gripped me by the shoulder with a hand that was
smeared red, had twisted me off my feet, and flung me headlong back
into my own room. He lifted me as though I was a little child.
I fell at full length upon the floor, and the door slammed
and shut out the passionate intensity of his face.
Then I heard the key turn in the lock, and Montgomery's voice
in expostulation.
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