Outside his door he paused.  On the ground stood the usual morning can of milk—­evidence that Chilcote was not yet awake or that, like himself, he had no appetite for breakfast.  He smiled ironically as the idea struck him, but it was a smile that stiffened rather than relaxed his lips.  Then he drew out the duplicate key he always carried, and, inserting it quietly, opened the door.  A close, unpleasant smell greeted him as he entered the small passage that divided the bed and sitting rooms—­a smell of whiskey mingling with the odor of stale smoke.  With a quick gesture he pushed open the bedroom door; then on the threshold he paused, a look of contempt and repulsion passing over his face.

In his first glance he scarcely grasped the details of the scene, for the half-drawn curtains kept the light dim, but as his eyes grew accustomed to the obscurity he gathered their significance.

The room had a sleepless, jaded air—­the room that under his own occupation had shown a rigid, almost monastic severity.  The plain dressing-table was littered with cigarette ends and marked with black and tawny patches where the tobacco had been left to burn itself out.  On one corner of the table a carafe of water and a whiskey-decanter rested one against the other, as if for support, and at the other end an overturned tumbler lay in a pool of liquid.  The whole effect was sickly and nauseating.  His glance turned involuntarily to the bed, and there halted.

On the hard, narrow mattress, from which the sheets and blankets had fallen in a disordered heap, lay Chilcote.  He was fully dressed in a shabby tweed suit of Loder’s; his collar was open, his lip and chin unshaven; one hand was limply grasping the pillow, while the other hung out over the side of the bed.  His face, pale, almost earthy in hue, might have been a mask, save for the slight convulsive spasms that crossed it from time to time, and corresponded with the faint, shivering starts that passed at intervals over his whole body.  To complete his repellent appearance, a lock of hair had fallen loose and lay black and damp across his forehead.

Loder stood for a space shocked and spellbound by the sight.  Even in the ghastly disarray, the likeness—­the extraordinary, sinister likeness that had become the pivot upon which he himself revolved—­struck him like a blow.  The man who lay there was himself-bound to him by some subtle, inexplicable tie of similarity.  As the idea touched him he turned aside and stepped quickly to the dressing-table; there, with unnecessary energy, he flung back the curtains and threw the window wide; then again he turned towards the bed.  He had one dominant impulse—­to waken Chilcote, to be free of the repulsive, inert presence that chilled him with so personal a horror.  Leaning over the bed, he caught the shoulder nearest to him and shook it.  It was not the moment for niceties, and his gesture was rough.

At his first touch Chilcote made no response—­his brain, dulled by indulgence in his vice, had become a laggard in conveying sensations; but at last, as the pressure on his shoulder increased, his nervous system seemed suddenly to jar into consciousness.  A long shudder shook him; he half lifted himself and then dropped back upon the pillow.