To this post a figure was tied

The room had been fashioned into a small museum, and the walls were lined by a number of glass-topped cases full of that collection of butterflies and moths the formation of which had been the relaxation of this complex and dangerous man. In the centre of this room there was an upright beam, which had been placed at some period as a support for the old worm-eaten baulk of timber which spanned the roof. To this post a figure was tied, so swathed and muffled in the sheets which had been used to secure it that one could not for the moment tell whether it was that of a man or a woman. One towel passed round the throat and was secured at the back of the pillar. Another covered the lower part of the face, and over it two dark eyes - eyes full of grief and shame and a dreadful questioning - stared  back at us.

- a strange image from the mostly banal The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle, pg. 160, 1902. Reminiscent of John Fowles' novel The Collector.