‘You two stand close here,’ said Miss
Abbey, ’and you’ll come to no hurt, and
see it brought in. Bob, you stand by the door.’
That sentinel, smartly giving his rolled shirt-sleeves
an extra and a final tuck on his shoulders, obeyed.
Sound of advancing voices, sound of advancing steps.
Shuffle and talk without. Momentary pause.
Two peculiarly blunt knocks or pokes at the door,
as if the dead man arriving on his back were striking
at it with the soles of his motionless feet.
’That’s the stretcher, or the shutter,
whichever of the two they are carrying,’ said
Miss Abbey, with experienced ear. ‘Open,
you Bob!’
Door opened. Heavy tread of laden men. A
halt. A rush. Stoppage of rush. Door
shut. Baffled boots from the vexed souls of disappointed
outsiders.
‘Come on, men!’ said Miss Abbey; for so
potent was she with her subjects that even then the
bearers awaited her permission. ‘First floor.’
The entry being low, and the staircase being low,
they so took up the burden they had set down, as to
carry that low. The recumbent figure, in passing,
lay hardly as high as the half door.
Miss Abbey started back at sight of it. ‘Why,
good God!’ said she, turning to her two companions,
’that’s the very man who made the declaration
we have just had in our hands. That’s Riderhood!’
THE SAME RESPECTED FRIEND IN MORE ASPECTS THAN ONE
In sooth, it is Riderhood and no other, or it is the
outer husk and shell of Riderhood and no other, that
is borne into Miss Abbey’s first-floor bedroom.
Supple to twist and turn as the Rogue has ever been,
he is sufficiently rigid now; and not without much
shuffling of attendant feet, and tilting of his bier
this way and that way, and peril even of his sliding
off it and being tumbled in a heap over the balustrades,
can he be got up stairs.
‘Fetch a doctor,’ quoth Miss Abbey.
And then, ‘Fetch his daughter.’ On
both of which errands, quick messengers depart.
The doctor-seeking messenger meets the doctor halfway,
coming under convoy of police. Doctor examines
the dank carcase, and pronounces, not hopefully, that
it is worth while trying to reanimate the same.
All the best means are at once in action, and everybody
present lends a hand, and a heart and soul. No
one has the least regard for the man; with them all,
he has been an object of avoidance, suspicion, and
aversion; but the spark of life within him is curiously
separable from himself now, and they have a deep interest
in it, probably because it is life, and they
are living and must die.
In answer to the doctor’s inquiry how did it
happen, and was anyone to blame, Tom Tootle gives
in his verdict, unavoidable accident and no one to
blame but the sufferer. ‘He was slinking
about in his boat,’ says Tom, ’which slinking
were, not to speak ill of the dead, the manner of
the man, when he come right athwart the steamer’s
bows and she cut him in two.’ Mr Tootle
is so far figurative, touching the dismemberment, as
that he means the boat, and not the man. For,
the man lies whole before them.
