“You medicos seem to me to think a lot more of death than we army fellows,” he said, as they neared the house with the lowered blinds. “I have a horror of killing: I acknowledge that. But as for death itself, what is a corpse, after all? A mere empty envelope. The likeness of the human being is the address; but the contents—the letter itself—is gone.”
Here Hugh shouted to the driver to stop, and without glancing at his companion, paid the fare and mounted the steps of No. 99. The sympathetic landlady had drawn down her blinds in respect to the dead girl, but Captain Pym did not notice this, he was looking after the departing hansom.
“You might have kept the fellow,” he said, discontentedly, as they entered the house.
Hugh muttered something about hansoms being plentiful in that fashionable quarter, and hurried upstairs, bidding Roderick follow.
The utter unsuspiciousness of Lilia’s cousin cut him to the quick. Yet, what was he to do? As he opened the door of the bedroom, he consoled himself by thinking how lightly Captain Pym had but a few minutes previously spoken of death.
Turning to hold open the door of the darkened room, he saw Roderick pause—his expression change. He looked sternly, distrustfully, at Hugh.
“What does this mean?” he said, entering and glancing from the bed, where a still, straight figure was visible under a sheet, to Paull. “The man, whoever he may be, is dead, and you must have known it.”
“I did know it,” said Hugh, calmly drawing up the blind of the window nearest the bed.
“Do you take me for a coward, then?” sneered Roderick.
“I will answer your questions presently,” said Hugh, watching Captain Pym closely, and throwing back the sheet to disclose the waxen, lovely face of the girl.