Al Turnbull's unnatural and uncompleted feelings found their
outlet in rushing to the aperture and looking into the unknown
room.

It was a third oblong cell exactly like the other two except that
it was doorless, and except that on one of the walls was painted
a large black A like the B and C outside their own doors. The
letter in this case was not painted outside, because this prison
had no outside.

On the same kind of tiled floor, of which the monotonous squares
had maddened Turnbull's eye and brain, was sitting a figure which
was startlingly short even for a child, only that the enormous
head was ringed with hair of a frosty grey. The figure was
draped, both insecurely and insufficiently, in what looked like
the remains of a brown flannel dressing-gown; an emptied cup of
cocoa stood on the floor beside it, and the creature had his big
grey head cocked at a particular angle of inquiry or attention
which amid all that gathering gloom and mystery struck one as
comic if not cocksure.

After six still seconds Turnbull could stand it no longer, but
called out to the dwarfish thing--in what words heaven knows. The
thing got up with the promptitude of an animal, and turning round
offered the spectacle of two owlish eyes and a huge
grey-and-white beard not unlike the plumage of an owl. This
extraordinary beard covered him literally to his feet (not that
that was very far), and perhaps it was as well that it did, for
portions of his remaining clothing seemed to fall off whenever he
moved. One talks trivially of a face like parchment, but this old