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Summary:
It is impossible to say how the idea of murdering the old man first entered the mind of the narrator. There was no real motive as stated by the narrator. The narrator states that one of the old man\'s eyes was a pale blue color with a film over it, which resembled the eye of a vulture. Just the sight of that eye made the narrator\'s blood run cold, and as a result, the eye (and with it the old man) must be destroyed.
Every night at midnight, the narrator went to the old man\'s room. Carefully, he turned the latch to the door, and opened it without making a sound. When a sufficient opening had been made, a covered lantern was thrust inside.
The old man suspected nothing. During the day, the narrator continued to perform his usual duties, and even dared to ask each morning how the old man had passed the night; however, at midnight, the nightly ritual continued.
Upon the eighth night, the narrator proceeded to the old man\'s room as usual; however, on this night, something was different.
He was so proud and started to giggle and then the old man started to move. The "killer" didn´t go away, he stayed. Then he make a noise. The old man woke up and sat in his bed and listened, but he didn´t hear something.
The old man groan because he was afraid and the man knew it, so he waited an hour or so. The old man tried to divert himself but it didn´t work. The man waited a long time, without hearing that the old man was going to bed again. He just heard the knock of the heart from the old man. It was going to be louder and louder. The man became afraid because maybe the neighbours could heard also the heartbeating. Suddenly he let a light shining on the old man and the eye starred at him. So the younger man started to scream and kill the old man. The man put his hand on the death body and wanted to feel whether the heart is beating. The old man was death. The eye of the old man wouldn´t disturb the man again. Next came the concealment of the body. The narrator dismembered the corpse by cutting off the head, the arms and the legs. Three planks were removed from the floor of the chamber to deposit the remains of what once had been a harmless, elderly man. The boards were replaced so carefully that no one would have been able to detect any wrong doing or foul play. There was no mess or blood stains to clean up; the narrator had cut up the body in a tub.
It was 4 A.M. by the time this ghastly deed had been completed. A knocking was heard at the door, and when the narrator answered it, he found three men who quickly introduced themselves \"...as officers of the police.\" They told the narrator that a neighbor had reported hearing a shriek in the night, and that they were there conducting an investigation to make sure that no foul play had occurred.
They sat and chatted at ease, while the narrator pleasantly answered their questions. However, the narrator soon wished them to be gone.
He swung the chair upon which he had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased.
He felt that he must scream or die! And then he told the police where the death body was.
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