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.

CHAPTER XXXIII

Interlopers

Now do those two gentlemen not very neat about the cuffs and buttons who attended the last coroner’s inquest at the Sol’s Arms reappear in the precincts with surprising swiftness (being, in fact, breathlessly fetched by the active and intelligent beadle), and institute perquisitions through the court, and dive into the Sol’s parlour, and write with ravenous little pens on tissue-paper.  Now do they note down, in the watches of the night, how the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane was yesterday, at about midnight, thrown into a state of the most intense agitation and excitement by the following alarming and horrible discovery.  Now do they set forth how it will doubtless be remembered that some time back a painful sensation was created in the public mind by a case of mysterious death from opium occurring in the first floor of the house occupied as a rag, bottle, and general marine store shop, by an eccentric individual of intemperate habits, far advanced in life, named Krook; and how, by a remarkable coincidence, Krook was examined at the inquest, which it may be recollected