For, on a low bed opposite the fire, a confusion of dirty patchwork, lean-ribbed ticking, and coarse sacking, the lawyer, hesitating just within the doorway, sees a man.
He lies there, dressed in shirt and trousers, with bare feet.
He has a yellow look in the spectral darkness of a candle that has guttered down until the whole length of its wick (still burning) has doubled over and left a tower of winding-sheet above it.
His hair is ragged, mingling with his whiskers and his beard--the latter, ragged too, and grown, like the scum and mist around him, in neglect.
Foul and filthy as the room is, foul and filthy as the air is, it is not easy to perceive what fumes those are which most oppress the senses in it; but through the general sickliness and faintness, and the odour of stale tobacco, there comes into the lawyer's mouth the bitter, vapid taste of opium.
"Hallo, my friend!" he cries, and strikes his iron candlestick against the door.
He thinks he has awakened his friend.
He lies a little turned away, but his eyes are surely open.
"Hallo, my friend!" he cries again.
"Hallo! Hallo!"
As he rattles on the door, the candle which has drooped so long goes out and leaves him in the dark, with the gaunt eyes in the shutters staring down upon the bed.
CHAPTER XI
Our Dear Brother
A touch on the lawyer's wrinkled hand as he stands in the dark room, irresolute, makes him start and say,
"What's that?"
"It's me," returns the old man of the house, whose breath is in his ear.
"Can't you wake him?"
"No."
"What have you done with your candle?"
"It's gone out.
Here it is."
Krook takes it, goes to the fire, stoops over the red embers, and tries to get a light.
The dying ashes have no light to spare, and his endeavours are vain.
Muttering, after an ineffectual call to his lodger, that he will go downstairs and bring a lighted candle from the shop, the old man departs.
Mr. Tulkinghorn, for some new reason that he has, does not await his return in the room, but on the stairs outside.
The welcome light soon shines upon the wall, as Krook comes slowly up with his green-eyed cat following at his heels.
"Does the man generally sleep like this?" inquired the lawyer in a low voice.
"Hi!
I don't know," says Krook, shaking his head and lifting his eyebrows.
"I know next to nothing of his habits except that he keeps himself very close."
Thus whispering, they both go in together.
As the light goes in, the great eyes in the shutters, darkening, seem to close.
Not so the eyes upon the bed.
"God save us!" exclaims Mr. Tulkinghorn.
"He is dead!"
Krook drops the heavy hand he has taken up so suddenly that the arm swings over the bedside.
They look at one another for a moment.
"Send for some doctor!
Call for Miss Flite up the stairs, sir.
Here's poison by the bed!
Call out for Flite, will you?" says Krook, with his lean hands spread out above the body like a vampire's wings.
Mr. Tulkinghorn hurries to the landing and calls,
"Miss Flite!
Flite!
Make haste, here, whoever you are!
Flite!"
Krook follows him with his eyes, and while he is calling, finds opportunity to steal to the old portmanteau and steal back again.
"Run, Flite, run!
The nearest doctor!
Run!" So Mr. Krook addresses a crazy little woman who is his female lodger, who appears and vanishes in a breath, who soon returns accompanied by a testy medical man brought from his dinner, with a broad, snuffy upper lip and a broad Scotch tongue.