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A Terribly Strange Bed – Wilkie Collins (1824—1889)

William Wilkie Collins was born at London in 1824. Like his friend Dickens, he was a voluminous writer of novels and tales, an editor and a dramatist. He was rather more interested in the short story form than Dickens, and a more accomplished master of it. A Terribly Strange Bed is one of the best known examples of the tale that is related for the sake of the thrill.

The story is reprinted from the volume After Dark, first published in London, 1856.

A Terribly Strange Bed

Shorty after my education at college was finished, I happened to be staying at Paris with an English friend. We were both young men then, and lived, I am afraid, rather a wild life, in the delightful city of our sojourn. One night we were idling about the neighborhood of the Palais Royal, doubtful to what amusement we should next betake ourselves. My friend proposed a visit to Frascati’s; but his suggestion was not to my taste.

I knew Frascati’s, as the French saying is, by heart; had lost and won plenty of five-franc pieces there, merely for amusement’s sake, until it was amusement no longer, and was thoroughly tired, in fact, of all the ghastly respectabilities of such a social anomaly as a respectable gambling-house.

“For Heaven’s sake,” said I to my friend, “let us go somewhere where we can see a little genuine, blackguard, poverty-stricken gaming, with no false gingerbread glitter thrown over it at all. Let us get away from fashionable Frascati’s, to a house where they don’t mind letting in a man with a ragged coat, or a man with no coat, ragged or otherwise.”

A Terribly Strange Bed part 15

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The smothering canopy was then lowered, but not so noiselessly as I had seen it lowered. When I mentioned this to the Sub-prefect, his answer, simple as it was, had a terrible significance, “My...

A Terribly Strange Bed part 14

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Away we went through the streets, the Sub-prefect cross-examining and congratulating me in the same breath as we marched at the head of our formidable posse comitatus. Sentinels were placed at the back and...

A Terribly Strange Bed part 13

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To some men the means of escape which I had discovered might have seemed difficult and dangerous enough—to me the prospect of slipping down the pipe into the street did not suggest even a...

A Terribly Strange Bed part 12

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But ere long all thought was again suspended by the sight of the mur-derous canopy moving once more. After it had remained on the bed— as nearly as I could guess—about ten minutes, it...

A Terribly Strange Bed part 11

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Without stopping to draw my breath, without wiping the cold sweat from my face, I rose instantly on my knees to watch the bed-top. I was literally spellbound by it. If I had heard...

A Terribly Strange Bed part 10

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Looking for what?Good God! the man had pulled his hat down on his brows! No! the hat itself was gone! Where was the conical crown? Where the feathers —three white, two green? Not there!...

A Terribly Strange Bed part 9

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This picture put a kind of constraint upon me to look upward too— at the top of the bed. It was a gloomy and not an interesting object, and I looked back at the...

A Terribly Strange Bed part 8

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I raised myself on my elbow, and looked about the room—which was brightened by a lovely moonlight pouring straight through the window—to see if it contained any pictures or ornaments that I could at...

A Terribly Strange Bed part 7

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The giddiness left me, and I began to feel a little like a reasonable being again. My first thought was of the risk of sleeping all night in a gambling-house; my second, of the...

A Terribly Strange Bed part 6

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Just as the ex-brave ended his oration in very lachrymose tones, the coffee came in, ready poured out in two cups. My attentive friend handed me one of the cups with a bow. I...

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