Page:Bleak House.djvu/152

 “Any time, sir?” says the medical gentleman. “It's probable he wull have been dead aboot three hours.”

“About that time, I should say,” observes a dark young man, on the other side of the bed.

“Air you in the maydickle prayfession yourself, sir ?” inquires the first.

The dark young man says yes.

“Then I'll just tak' my depairture,” replies the other ; “for I'm nae gude here !” With which remark, he finishes his brief attendance, and returns to finish his dinner.

The dark young surgeon passes the candle across and across the face, and carefully examines the law-writer, who has established his pretensions to his name by becoming indeed No one.

“I knew this person by sight, very well,” says he. “He has purchased opium of me, for the last year and a half. Was anybody present related to him?” glancing round upon the three bystanders.

“I was his landlord,” grimly answers Krook, taking the candle from the surgeon's outstretched hand, “He told me once, I was the nearest relation he had.”

“He has died,” says the surgeon, “of an over-dose of opium, there is no doubt. The room is strongly flavored with it. There is enough here now,” taking an old teapot from Mr. Krook, “to kill a dozen people.”

“Do you think he did it on purpose ?” asks Krook.

“Took the over-dose?”

“Yes !” Krook almost smacks his lips with the unction of a horrible interest.

“I can't say. I should think it unlikely, as he has been in the habit of taking so much. But nobody can tell. He was very poor, I suppose ?”

“I suppose he was. His room—don't look rich,” says Krook ; who might have changed eyes with his cat, as he casts his sharp glance around.

“But I have never been in it since he had it, and he was too close to name his circumstarnces [sic] to me.”

“Did he owe you any rent?”

“Six weeks.”

“He will never pay it !” says the young man, resuming his examination. “It is beyond a doubt that he is indeed as dead as Pharaoh ; and to judge from his appearance and condition, I should think it a happy release. Yet he must have been a good figure when a youth, and I dare say good-looking.” He says this, not unfeelingly, while sitting on the bedstead's edge, with his face towards that other face, and his hand upon the region of the heart. “I recollect once thinking there was something in his manner, uncouth as it was, that denoted a fall in life. Was that so ?” he continues, looking round.

Krook replies, “You might as well ask me to describe the ladies whose heads of hair I have got in sacks down stairs. Than that he was my lodger for a year and a half, and lived—or didn't live—by law-writing, I know no more of him.”

During this dialogue, Mr. Tulkinghorn has stood aloof by the old portmanteau, with his hands behind him, equally removed, to all appearance, from all three kinds of interest exhibited near the bed—from the young