BLEAK HOUSE

Inapoi la Sumar

CHAPTER XXXII  

The Appointed Time

It is night in Lincoln's Inn--perplexed and troublous valley of the  shadow of the law, where suitors generally find but little day--and  fat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rattled  down the crazy wooden stairs and dispersed.  The bell that rings at  nine o'clock has ceased its doleful clangour about nothing; the  gates are shut; and the night-porter, a solemn warder with a mighty  power of sleep, keeps guard in his lodge.  From tiers of staircase  windows clogged lamps like the eyes of Equity, bleared Argus with a  fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at  the stars.  In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little  patches of candlelight reveal where some wise draughtsman and  conveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes  of sheep-skin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an  acre of land.  Over which bee-like industry these benefactors of  their species linger yet, though office-hours be past, that they  may give, for every day, some good account at last.  In the neighbouring court, where the Lord Chancellor of the rag and  bottle shop dwells, there is a general tendency towards beer and  supper.  Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, whose respective sons,  engaged with a circle of acquaintance in the game of hide and seek,  have been lying in ambush about the by-ways of Chancery Lane for  some hours and scouring the plain of the same thoroughfare to the  confusion of passengers--Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins have but now  exchanged congratulations on the children being abed, and they  still linger on a door-step over a few parting words.  Mr. Krook  and his lodger, and the fact of Mr. Krook's being "continually in  liquor," and the testamentary prospects of the young man are, as  usual, the staple of their conversation. 

But they have something  to say, likewise, of the Harmonic Meeting at the Sol's Arms, where  the sound of the piano through the partly opened windows jingles  out into the court, and where Little Swills, after keeping the  lovers of harmony in a roar like a very Yorick, may now be heard  taking the gruff line in a concerted piece and sentimentally  adjuring his friends and patrons to "Listen, listen, listen, tew  the wa-ter fall!" 

Mrs. Perkins and Mrs. Piper compare opinions on  the subject of the young lady of professional celebrity who assists  at the Harmonic Meetings and who has a space to herself in the  manuscript announcement in the window, Mrs. Perkins possessing  information that she has been married a year and a half, though  announced as Miss M. Melvilleson, the noted siren, and that her  baby is clandestinely conveyed to the Sol's Arms every night to  receive its natural nourishment during the entertainments.  "Sooner  than which, myself," says Mrs. Perkins, "I would get my living by  selling lucifers."  Mrs. Piper, as in duty bound, is of the same  opinion, holding that a private station is better than public  applause, and thanking heaven for her own (and, by implication,  Mrs. Perkins') respectability. 

By this time the pot-boy of the  Sol's Arms appearing with her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs. Piper  accepts that tankard and retires indoors, first giving a fair good  night to Mrs. Perkins, who has had her own pint in her hand ever  since it was fetched from the same hostelry by young Perkins before  he was sent to bed.  Now there is a sound of putting up shop- shutters in the court and a smell as of the smoking of pipes; and  shooting stars are seen in upper windows, further indicating  retirement to rest.  Now, too, the policeman begins to push at  doors; to try fastenings; to be suspicious of bundles; and to  administer his beat, on the hypothesis that every one is either  robbing or being robbed.  It is a close night, though the damp cold is searching too, and  there is a laggard mist a little way up in the air.  It is a fine  steaming night to turn the slaughter-houses, the unwholesome  trades, the sewerage, bad water, and burial-grounds to account, and  give the registrar of deaths some extra business.  It may be  something in the air--there is plenty in it--or it may be something  in himself that is in fault; but Mr. Weevle, otherwise Jobling, is  very ill at ease. 

He comes and goes between his own room and the  open street door twenty times an hour.  He has been doing so ever  since it fell dark.  Since the Chancellor shut up his shop, which  he did very early to-night, Mr. Weevle has been down and up, and  down and up (with a cheap tight velvet skull-cap on his head,  making his whiskers look out of all proportion), oftener than  before.  It is no phenomenon that Mr. Snagsby should be ill at ease too, for  he always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influence of  the secret that is upon him.  Impelled by the mystery of which he  is a partaker and yet in which he is not a sharer, Mr. Snagsby  haunts what seems to be its fountain-head--the rag and bottle shop  in the court.  It has an irresistible attraction for him.  Even  now, coming round by the Sol's Arms with the intention of passing  down the court, and out at the Chancery Lane end, and so  terminating his unpremeditated after-supper stroll of ten minutes'  long from his own door and back again, Mr. Snagsby approaches. 

"What, Mr. Weevle?" says the stationer, stopping to speak. 

"Are  YOU there?" 

"Aye!" says Weevle, "Here I am, Mr. Snagsby." 

"Airing yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?" the  stationer inquires. 

"Why, there's not much air to be got here; and what there is, is  not very freshening," Weevle answers, glancing up and down the  court. 

"Very true, sir.  Don't you observe," says Mr. Snagsby, pausing to  sniff and taste the air a little, "don't you observe, Mr. Weevle,  that you're--not to put too fine a point upon it--that you're  rather greasy here, sir?" 

"Why, I have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour  in the place to-night," Mr. Weevle rejoins. 

"I suppose it's chops  at the Sol's Arms." 

"Chops, do you think?  Oh! Chops, eh?"  Mr. Snagsby sniffs and  tastes again. 

"Well, sir, I suppose it is.  But I should say their  cook at the Sol wanted a little looking after.  She has been  burning 'em, sir!  And I don't think"--Mr. Snagsby sniffs and  tastes again and then spits and wipes his mouth--"I don't think-- not to put too fine a point upon it--that they were quite fresh  when they were shown the gridiron." 

"That's very likely.  It's a tainting sort of weather." 

"It IS a tainting sort of weather," says Mr. Snagsby, "and I find  it sinking to the spirits." 

"By George!  I find it gives me the horrors," returns Mr. Weevle. 

"Then, you see, you live in a lonesome way, and in a lonesome room,  with a black circumstance hanging over it," says Mr. Snagsby,  looking in past the other's shoulder along the dark passage and  then falling back a step to look up at the house. 

"I couldn't live  in that room alone, as you do, sir.  I should get so fidgety and  worried of an evening, sometimes, that I should be driven to come  to the door and stand here sooner than sit there.  But then it's  very true that you didn't see, in your room, what I saw there.   That makes a difference."  "I know quite enough about it," returns Tony. 

"It's not agreeable, is it?" pursues Mr. Snagsby, coughing his  cough of mild persuasion behind his hand. 

"Mr. Krook ought to  consider it in the rent.  I hope he does, I am sure." 

"I hope he does," says Tony.  "But I doubt it." 

"You find the rent too high, do you, sir?" returns the stationer.   

"Rents ARE high about here.  I don't know how it is exactly, but  the law seems to put things up in price.  Not," adds Mr. Snagsby  with his apologetic cough, "that I mean to say a word against the  profession I get my living by." 

Mr. Weevle again glances up and down the court and then looks at  the stationer.  Mr. Snagsby, blankly catching his eye, looks upward  for a star or so and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly  seeing his way out of this conversation. 

"It's a curious fact, sir," he observes, slowly rubbing his hands,  "that he should have been--" 

"Who's he?" interrupts Mr. Weevle. 

"The deceased, you know," says Mr. Snagsby, twitching his head and  right eyebrow towards the staircase and tapping his acquaintance on  the button. 

"Ah, to be sure!" returns the other as if he were not over-fond of  the subject. 

"I thought we had done with him." 

"I was only going to say it's a curious fact, sir, that he should  have come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that  you should come and live here, and be one of my writers too.  Which  there is nothing derogatory, but far from it in the appellation,"  says Mr. Snagsby, breaking off with a mistrust that he may have  unpolitely asserted a kind of proprietorship in Mr. Weevle,  "because I have known writers that have gone into brewers' houses  and done really very respectable indeed.  Eminently respectable,  sir," adds Mr. Snagsby with a misgiving that he has not improved  the matter. 

"It's a curious coincidence, as you say," answers Weevle, once more  glancing up and down the court. 

"Seems a fate in it, don't there?" suggests the stationer. 

"There does." 

"Just so," observes the stationer with his confirmatory cough.   

"Quite a fate in it.  Quite a fate.  Well, Mr. Weevle, I am afraid  I must bid you good night"--Mr. Snagsby speaks as if it made him  desolate to go, though he has been casting about for any means of  escape ever since he stopped to speak--"my little woman will be  looking for me else.  Good night, sir!" 

If Mr. Snagsby hastens home to save his little woman the trouble of  looking for him, he might set his mind at rest on that score.  His  little woman has had her eye upon him round the Sol's Arms all this  time and now glides after him with a pocket handkerchief wrapped  over her head, honourmg Mr. Weevle and his doorway with a searching  glance as she goes past. 

"You'll know me again, ma'am, at all events," says Mr. Weevle to  himself; "and I can't compliment you on your appearance, whoever  you are, with your head tied up in a bundle.  Is this fellow NEVER  coming!" 

This fellow approaches as he speaks.  Mr. Weevle softly holds up  his finger, and draws him into the passage, and closes the street  door.  Then they go upstairs, Mr. Weevle heavily, and Mr. Guppy  (for it is he) very lightly indeed.  When they are shut into the  back room, they speak low. 

"I thought you had gone to Jericho at least instead of coming  here," says Tony. 

"Why, I said about ten." 

"You said about ten," Tony repeats. 

"Yes, so you did say about  ten.  But according to my count, it's ten times ten--it's a hundred  o'clock.  I never had such a night in my life!" 

"What has been the matter?" 

"That's it!" says Tony. 

"Nothing has been the matter.  But here  have I been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib till I have  had the horrors falling on me as thick as hail.  THERE'S a blessed- looking candle!" says Tony, pointing to the heavily burning taper  on his table with a great cabbage head and a long winding-sheet. 

"That's easily improved," Mr. Guppy observes as he takes the  snuffers in hand. 

"IS it?" returns his friend. 

"Not so easily as you think.  It has  been smouldering like that ever since it was lighted." 

"Why, what's the matter with you, Tony?" inquires Mr. Guppy,  looking at him, snuffers in hand, as he sits down with his elbow on  the table. 

"William Guppy," replies the other, "I am in the downs.  It's this  unbearably dull, suicidal room--and old Boguey downstairs, I  suppose." 

Mr. Weevle moodily pushes the snuffers-tray from him  with his elbow, leans his head on his hand, puts his feet on the  fender, and looks at the fire.  Mr. Guppy, observing him, slightly  tosses his head and sits down on the other side of the table in an  easy attitude. 

"Wasn't that Snagsby talking to you, Tony?" 

"Yes, and he--yes, it was Snagsby," said Mr. Weevle, altering the  construction of his sentence. 

"On business?" 

"No.  No business.  He was only sauntering by and stopped to  prose." 

"I thought it was Snagsby," says Mr. Guppy, "and thought it as well  that he shouldn't see me, so I waited till he was gone." 

"There we go again, William G.!" cried Tony, looking up for an  instant. 

"So mysterious and secret!  By George, if we were going  to commit a murder, we couldn't have more mystery about it!" 

Mr. Guppy affects to smile, and with the view of changing the  conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round  the room at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, terminating his  survey with the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf, in  which she is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the  terrace, and a vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase,  and a prodigious piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the  prodigious piece of fur, and a bracelet on her arm. 

"That's very like Lady Dedlock," says Mr. Guppy. 

"It's a speaking  likeness."  "I wish it was," growls Tony, without changing his position. 

"I  should have some fashionable conversation, here, then." 

Finding by this time that his friend is not to be wheedled into a  more sociable humour, Mr. Guppy puts about upon the ill-used tack  and remonstrates with him. 

"Tony," says he, "I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for  no man knows what it is when it does come upon a man better than I  do, and no man perhaps has a better right to know it than a man who  has an unrequited image imprinted on his 'eart.  But there are  bounds to these things when an unoffending party is in question,  and I will acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don't think your manner  on the present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly." 

"This is strong language, William Guppy," returns Mr. Weevle. 

"Sir, it may be," retorts Mr. William Guppy, "but I feel strongly  when I use it." 

Mr. Weevle admits that he has been wrong and begs Mr. William Guppy  to think no more about it.  Mr. William Guppy, however, having got  the advantage, cannot quite release it without a little more  injured remonstrance. 

"No!  Dash it, Tony," says that gentleman, "you really ought to be  careful how you wound the feelings of a man who has an unrequited  image imprinted on his 'eart and who is NOT altogether happy in  those chords which vibrate to the tenderest emotions.  You, Tony,  possess in yourself all that is calculated to charm the eye and  allure the taste.  It is not--happily for you, perhaps, and I may  wish that I could say the same--it is not your character to hover  around one flower.  The ole garden is open to you, and your airy  pinions carry you through it.  Still, Tony, far be it from me, I am  sure, to wound even your feelings without a cause!"  Tony again entreats that the subject may be no longer pursued,  saying emphatically, "William Guppy, drop it!"  Mr. Guppy  acquiesces, with the reply, "I never should have taken it up, Tony,  of my own accord." 

"And now," says Tony, stirring the fire, "touching this same bundle  of letters.  Isn't it an extraordinary thing of Krook to have  appointed twelve o'clock to-night to hand 'em over to me?" 

"Very.  What did he do it for?" 

"What does he do anything for?  HE don't know.  Said to-day was his  birthday and he'd hand 'em over to-night at twelve o'clock.  He'll  have drunk himself blind by that time.  He has been at it all day." 

"He hasn't forgotten the appointment, I hope?" 

"Forgotten?  Trust him for that.  He never forgets anything.  I saw  him to-night, about eight--helped him to shut up his shop--and he  had got the letters then in his hairy cap.  He pulled it off and  showed 'em me.  When the shop was closed, he took them out of his  cap, hung his cap on the chair-back, and stood turning them over  before the fire.  I heard him a little while afterwards, through  the floor here, humming like the wind, the only song he knows-- about Bibo, and old Charon, and Bibo being drunk when he died, or  something or other.  He has been as quiet since as an old rat  asleep in his hole." 

"And you are to go down at twelve?" 

"At twelve.  And as I tell you, when you came it seemed to me a  hundred." 

"Tony," says Mr. Guppy after considering a little with his legs  crossed, "he can't read yet, can he?"  "Read!  He'll never read.  He can make all the letters separately,  and he knows most of them separately when he sees them; he has got  on that much, under me; but he can't put them together.  He's too  old to acquire the knack of it now--and too drunk." 

"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs, "how do  you suppose he spelt out that name of Hawdon?" 

"He never spelt it out.  You know what a curious power of eye he  has and how he has been used to employ himself in copying things by  eye alone.  He imitated it, evidently from the direction of a  letter, and asked me what it meant." 

"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs again,  "should you say that the original was a man's writing or a  woman's?" 

"A woman's.  Fifty to one a lady's--slopes a good deal, and the end  of the letter 'n,' long and hasty."

  Mr. Guppy has been biting his thumb-nail during this dialogue,  generally changing the thumb when he has changed the cross leg.  As  he is going to do so again, he happens to look at his coat-sleeve.   It takes his attention.  He stares at it, aghast. 

"Why, Tony, what on earth is going on in this house to-night?  Is  there a chimney on fire?" 

"Chimney on fire!" 

"Ah!" returns Mr. Guppy. 

"See how the soot's falling.  See here,  on my arm!  See again, on the table here!  Confound the stuff, it  won't blow off--smears like black fat!" 

They look at one another, and Tony goes listening to the door, and  a little way upstairs, and a little way downstairs.  Comes back and  says it's all right and all quiet, and quotes the remark he lately  made to Mr. Snagsby about their cooking chops at the Sol's Arms. 

"And it was then," resumes Mr. Guppy, still glancing with  remarkable aversion at the coat-sleeve, as they pursue their  conversation before the fire, leaning on opposite sides of the  table, with their heads very near together, "that he told you of  his having taken the bundle of letters from his lodger's  portmanteau?" 

"That was the time, sir," answers Tony, faintly adjusting his  whiskers. 

"Whereupon I wrote a line to my dear boy, the Honourable  William Guppy, informing him of the appointment for to-night and  advising him not to call before, Boguey being a slyboots." 

The light vivacious tone of fashionable life which is usually  assumed by Mr. Weevle sits so ill upon him to-night that he  abandons that and his whiskers together, and after looking over his  shoulder, appears to yield himself up a prey to the horrors again. 

"You are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, and  to get yourself into a position to tell him all about them.  That's  the arrangement, isn't it, Tony?" asks Mr. Guppy, anxiously biting  his thumb-nail. 

"You can't speak too low.  Yes.  That's what he and I agreed." 

"I tell you what, Tony--" 

"You can't speak too low," says Tony once more.  Mr. Guppy nods his  sagacious head, advances it yet closer, and drops into a whisper. 

"I tell you what.  The first thing to be done is to make another  packet like the real one so that if he should ask to see the real  one while it's in my possession, you can show him the dummy." 

"And suppose he detects the dummy as soon as he sees it, which with  his biting screw of an eye is about five hundred times more likely  than not," suggests Tony. 

"Then we'll face it out.  They don't belong to him, and they never  did.  You found that, and you placed them in my hands--a legal  friend of yours--for security.  If he forces us to it, they'll be  producible, won't they?" 

"Ye-es," is Mr. Weevle's reluctant admission. 

"Why, Tony," remonstrates his friend, "how you look!  You don't  doubt William Guppy?  You don't suspect any harm?" 

"I don't suspect anything more than I know, William," returns the  other gravely. 

"And what do you know?" urges Mr. Guppy, raising his voice a  little; but on his friend's once more warning him, "I tell you, you  can't speak too low," he repeats his question without any sound at  all, forming with his lips only the words, "What do you know?" 

"I know three things.  First, I know that here we are whispering in  secrecy, a pair of conspirators."

  "Well!" says Mr. Guppy. 

"And we had better be that than a pair of  noodles, which we should be if we were doing anything else, for  it's the only way of doing what we want to do.  Secondly?" 

"Secondly, it's not made out to me how it's likely to be  profitable, after all." 

Mr. Guppy casts up his eyes at the portrait of Lady Dedlock over  the mantelshelf and replies, "Tony, you are asked to leave that to  the honour of your friend.  Besides its being calculated to serve  that friend in those chords of the human mind which--which need not  be called into agonizing vibration on the present occasion--your  friend is no fool.  What's that?" 

"It's eleven o'clock striking by the bell of Saint Paul's.  Listen  and you'll hear all the bells in the city jangling."  Both sit silent, listening to the metal voices, near and distant,  resounding from towers of various heights, in tones more various  than their situations.  When these at length cease, all seems more  mysterious and quiet than before.  One disagreeable result of  whispering is that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence,  haunted by the ghosts of sound--strange cracks and tickings, the  rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread  of dreadful feet that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the  winter snow.  So sensitive the two friends happen to be that the  air is full of these phantoms, and the two look over their  shoulders by one consent to see that the door is shut. 

"Yes, Tony?" says Mr. Guppy, drawing nearer to the fire and biting  his unsteady thumb-nail. 

"You were going to say, thirdly?" 

"It's far from a pleasant thing to be plotting about a dead man in  the room where he died, especially when you happen to live in it." 

"But we are plotting nothing against him, Tony." 

"May be not, still I don't like it.  Live here by yourself and see  how YOU like it." 

"As to dead men, Tony," proceeds Mr. Guppy, evading this proposal,  "there have been dead men in most rooms." 

"I know there have, but in most rooms you let them alone, and--and  they let you alone," Tony answers.  The two look at each other again.  Mr. Guppy makes a hurried remark  to the effect that they may be doing the deceased a service, that  he hopes so.  There is an oppressive blank until Mr. Weevle, by  stirring the fire suddenly, makes Mr. Guppy start as if his heart  had been stirred instead. 

"Fah! Here's more of this hateful soot hanging about," says he.   

"Let us open the window a bit and get a mouthful of air.  It's too  close." 

He raises the sash, and they both rest on the window-sill, half in  and half out of the room.  The neighbouring houses are too near to  admit of their seeing any sky without craning their necks and  looking up, but lights in frowsy windows here and there, and the  rolling of distant carriages, and the new expression that there is  of the stir of men, they find to be comfortable.  Mr. Guppy,  noiselessly tapping on the window-sill, resumes his whisperirig in  quite a light-comedy tone. 

"By the by, Tony, don't forget old Smallweed," meaning the younger  of that name. 

"I have not let him into this, you know.  That  grandfather of his is too keen by half.  It runs in the family."  "I remember," says Tony. 

"I am up to all that." 

"And as to Krook," resumes Mr. Guppy. 

"Now, do you suppose he  really has got hold of any other papers of importance, as he has  boasted to you, since you have been such allies?"  Tony shakes his head. 

"I don't know.  Can't Imagine.  If we get  through this business without rousing his suspicions, I shall be  better informed, no doubt.  How can I know without seeing them,  when he don't know himself?  He is always spelling out words from  them, and chalking them over the table and the shop-wall, and  asking what this is and what that is; but his whole stock from  beginning to end may easily be the waste-paper he bought it as, for  anything I can say.  It's a monomania with him to think he is  possessed of documents.  He has been going to learn to read them  this last quarter of a century, I should judge, from what he tells  me." 

"How did he first come by that idea, though?  That's the question,"  Mr. Guppy suggests with one eye shut, after a little forensic  meditation. 

"He may have found papers in something he bought,  where papers were not supposed to be, and may have got it into his  shrewd head from the manner and place of their concealment that  they are worth something." 

"Or he may have been taken in, in some pretended bargain.  Or he  may have been muddled altogether by long staring at whatever he HAS  got, and by drink, and by hanging about the Lord Chancellor's Court  and hearing of documents for ever," returns Mr. Weevle.  Mr. Guppy sitting on the window-sill, nodding his head and  balancing all these possibilities in his mind, continues  thoughtfully to tap it, and clasp it, and measure it with his hand,  until he hastily draws his hand away. 

"What, in the devil's name," he says, "is this!  Look at my  fingers!"  A thick, yellow liquor defiles them, which is offensive to the  touch and sight and more offensive to the smell.  A stagnant,  sickening oil with some natural repulsion in it that makes them  both shudder. 

"What have you been doing here?  What have you been pouring out of  window?" 

"I pouring out of window!  Nothing, I swear!  Never, since I have  been here!" cries the lodger.  And yet look here--and look here!  When he brings the candle here,  from the corner of the window-sill, it slowly drips and creeps away  down the bricks, here lies in a little thick nauseous pool. 

"This is a horrible house," says Mr. Guppy, shutting down the  window. 

"Give me some water or I shall cut my hand off." 

He so washes, and rubs, and scrubs, and smells, and washes, that he  has not long restored himself with a glass of brandy and stood  silently before the fire when Saint Paul's bell strikes twelve and  all those other bells strike twelve from their towers of various  heights in the dark air, and in their many tones.  When all is  quiet again, the lodger says, "It's the appointed time at last.   Shall I go?"  Mr. Guppy nods and gives him a "lucky touch" on the back, but not  with the washed hand, though it is his right hand.  He goes downstairs, and Mr. Guppy tries to compose himself before  the fire for waiting a long time.  But in no more than a minute or  two the stairs creak and Tony comes swiftly back. 

"Have you got them?"  "Got them!  No.  The old man's not there."  He has been so horribly frightened in the short interval that his  terror seizes the other, who makes a rush at him and asks loudly,  "What's the matter?" 

"I couldn't make him hear, and I softly opened the door and looked  in.  And the burning smell is there--and the soot is there, and the  oil is there--and he is not there!" 

Tony ends this with a groan.  Mr. Guppy takes the light.  They go down, more dead than alive, and  holding one another, push open the door of the back shop.  The cat  has retreated close to it and stands snarling, not at them, at  something on the ground before the fire.  There is a very little  fire left in the grate, but there is a smouldering, suffocating  vapour in the room and a dark, greasy coating on the walls and  ceiling.  The chairs and table, and the bottle so rarely absent  from the table, all stand as usual.  On one chair-back hang the old  man's hairy cap and coat. 

"Look!" whispers the lodger, pointing his friend's attention to  these objects with a trembling finger. 

"I told you so.  When I saw  him last, he took his cap off, took out the little bundle of old  letters, hung his cap on the back of the chair--his coat was there  already, for he had pulled that off before he went to put the  shutters up--and I left him turning the letters over in his hand,  standing just where that crumbled black thing is upon the floor." 

Is he hanging somewhere?  They look up.  No. 

"See!" whispers Tony. 

"At the foot of the same chair there lies a  dirty bit of thin red cord that they tie up pens with.  That went  round the letters.  He undid it slowly, leering and laughing at me,  before he began to turn them over, and threw it there.  I saw it  fall." 

"What's the matter with the cat?" says Mr. Guppy.  "Look at her!" 

"Mad, I think.  And no wonder in this evil place." 

They advance slowly, looking at all these things.  The cat remains  where they found her, still snarling at the something on the ground  before the fire and between the two chairs.  What is it?  Hold up  the light.  Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a  little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to  be steeped in something; and here is--is it the cinder of a small  charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it  coal?  Oh, horror, he IS here!  And this from which we run away,  striking out the light and overturning one another into the street,  is all that represents him.  Help, help, help!  Come into this house for heaven's sake!  Plenty  will come in, but none can help. 

The Lord Chancellor of that  court, true to his title in his last act, has died the death of all  lord chancellors in all courts and of all authorities in all places  under all names soever, where false pretences are made, and where  injustice is done.  Call the death by any name your Highness will,  attribute it to whom you will, or say it might have been prevented  how you will, it is the same death eternally--inborn, inbred,  engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and  that only--spontaneous combustion, and none other of all the deaths  that can be died.

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