“If he is it’s not much good my coming, is it?”

“I should be awfully grateful if you would.  I’ve got a cab at the door.  It’ll only take half an hour.”

Tyrell put on his hat.  In the cab he asked him one or two questions.

“He seemed no worse than usual when I left this morning,” said Philip.  “It gave me an awful shock when I went in just now.  And the thought of his dying all alone....  D’you think he knew he was going to die?”

Philip remembered what Cronshaw had said.  He wondered whether at that last moment he had been seized with the terror of death.  Philip imagined himself in such a plight, knowing it was inevitable and with no one, not a soul, to give an encouraging word when the fear seized him.

“You’re rather upset,” said Dr. Tyrell.

He looked at him with his bright blue eyes.  They were not unsympathetic.  When he saw Cronshaw, he said: 

“He must have been dead for some hours.  I should think he died in his sleep.  They do sometimes.”

The body looked shrunk and ignoble.  It was not like anything human.  Dr. Tyrell looked at it dispassionately.  With a mechanical gesture he took out his watch.

“Well, I must be getting along.  I’ll send the certificate round.  I suppose you’ll communicate with the relatives.”

“I don’t think there are any,” said Philip.

“How about the funeral?”

“Oh, I’ll see to that.”

Dr. Tyrell gave Philip a glance.  He wondered whether he ought to offer a couple of sovereigns towards it.  He knew nothing of Philip’s circumstances; perhaps he could well afford the expense; Philip might think it impertinent if he made any suggestion.

“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do,” he said.

Philip and he went out together, parting on the doorstep, and Philip went to a telegraph office in order to send a message to Leonard Upjohn.  Then he went to an undertaker whose shop he passed every day on his way to the hospital.  His attention had been drawn to it often by the three words in silver lettering on a black cloth, which, with two model coffins, adorned the window:  Economy, Celerity, Propriety.  They had always diverted him.  The undertaker was a little fat Jew with curly black hair, long and greasy, in black, with a large diamond ring on a podgy finger.  He received Philip with a peculiar manner formed by the mingling of his natural blatancy with the subdued air proper to his calling.  He quickly saw that Philip was very helpless and promised to send round a woman at once to perform the needful offices.  His suggestions for the funeral were very magnificent; and Philip felt ashamed of himself when the undertaker seemed to think his objections mean.  It was horrible to haggle on such a matter, and finally Philip consented to an expensiveness which he could ill afford.

“I quite understand, sir,” said the undertaker, “you don’t want any show and that—­I’m not a believer in ostentation myself, mind you—­but you want it done gentlemanly-like.  You leave it to me, I’ll do it as cheap as it can be done, ’aving regard to what’s right and proper.  I can’t say more than that, can I?”