inselpeter ponders: Isn't "Cask" the one with that insufferable journey deep into cellar…?

Yes. It's Mardi Gras or Carnival or some such bacchanalia, and this costumed guy leads his unwitting, besotted loan shark into the catacombs under the city streets claiming they're going to find the cask of the greatest wine ever made. The lender, between his drunken state and the borrower's masquerade, doesn't recognize his borrower and just figures he's going to get more tanked. Ends up he gets bricked into a corner and left to die.

Poe was a disturbed man. But I rather like his work.