But Claudius' hesitation had been that of physical weakness; confronted in this way with the problem of fraternity, he did not waver any longer. On the threshold of safety, he turned straight back into the jaws of destruction. He had not emerged from that darkness and depth of earth, to descend into a lower profundity and a denser darkness of the soul.
He glanced at the brazen monitor: its surface still shivered, though his senses were not fine enough to hear the faint sound. But there was no delusion; the dead in the morgue had signaled to the world on whose verge it was balanced.
It cost the student no pang now to retrace the steps he had painfully counted, to reach the building, out of the cellars of which he had so gladly climbed. On thus facing it, he knew by a window being lighted that his goal was there.
He had found fresh energy in his mission, rather than the scanty refreshment, and in three minutes was at the door. Heavy with iron banding the oak, it was not made for the hand of the dying to move it, but Claudius dragged it open with violence. He sprang inside with the vivacity of a bridegroom invading the nuptial chamber, although here was no agreeable sight.
A long plain hall, of grey stone, the seams defined with black cement; all the windows high up, small and grated; only the one door, never locked. Two rows of slate beds, three of which only were occupied; two men and a boy, nude save a waistcloth; over their heads—sluggishly swayed by the air the new-comer had carelessly admitted—their clothes were hung like shapeless shadows. They had been dredged up in the Isar's mud, found at a corner, dragged from under a cartwheel. No one identifying them, they were deposited here; their fate? dissection for the benefit of science, and interment of the detached portions in the pauper's hell.
Which had rung the bell?
Claudius investigated the three: the boy had been crushed by the sludge-basket of the steam-dredge; not a spark of life was left there, his companion was green and horrible; he, too, had passed the bourne.
But on the other row, alone, a robust man with disfigured face, and red whiskers, looked like a fresh cut alabaster statue. Cold had blanched him; but a faint steam arose from his armpits, in the sepulchral light of a green-shaded gas-jet. There heat remained to prove that the great furnace in the frame had not ceased to be fed.
The student bent over him to feel the heart, when, as promptly, he sprang back. Spite of the maltreated face, he recognized his combatant in the duel with canes; it was Major Von Sendlingen, who had been flung on the slab in the public dead-house.
Had Baboushka commanded his death to prevent her complicity in the assault on Daniels and his daughter being published, and had she suggested the stripping which caused the police to confound the noble officer with the victim of the "pickers-up" of drunkards?