He had started his professional career with high expectations and a confidence born of capital possession. They had all, hopes and confidence and capital, gone to wreck on the shoals of a giant fraud. What solace to him was it that the law had ended by claiming its own? It had been a greater mercy had it remained eternally blind, and left him, one of many victims, to live on content in his fool’s paradise. Though his substance had been dissipated, the interest, regularly paid, had served him for his needs. It had been all the sinews he desired in his wrestle with fortune. Was it not in the bitter irony of things that his high rectitude should be expected to rejoice in that vindication of justice which had left him a pauper?
He recalled, in a sudden impotent fury, the occasion, or the suspected occasion, which had marked him down for ruin. His capital had been all invested in Bank of England stock, and the securities had been deposited with Fauntleroy, the now notorious banker of Berners Street. It had been this villain’s practice to forge powers of attorney enabling him to dispose of his clients’ property, and the man’s cool audacity had even, it was said, carried him so far as to the occasional appending of a customer’s name to a fraudulent deed in the customer’s own presence, and the then sending it, with its ink still wet, as though from the visitor’s hand, into the clerks’ department.
Such, he fully believed, had been the case with him during a business call he had made one day upon the head of the house. He remembered, cursing the memory, the sleek, plausible figure in its black tights and broadcloth, the spotless frill at its bosom, the smile on its prosperous face, the pen travelling in its plump fingers while the voice went on, even, polite, and interested. To be signing away so inhumanly the fortune, the happiness, the soul of a fellow-creature, and never all the while to flush or falter. Damn him!
Well, he was damned maybe. A glutton, a sybarite, a voluptuary, he had come to the end of his feasting, and only for Lazarus remained the scraps and dregs of the banquet.
A rap at the door broke in upon his miserable reverie, and a small servant entered the room. Two gentlemen, she said, desired particularly to see him. Who were they? She did not know, they would give no name. Where were they? In the surgery, which opened on the back. They had brought something with them, something on a hand-cart, and then other men, who had deposited the something, had left. She was used to the traffic, or had been, and showed no agitation or alarm.
Resurrection-men! He had no desire to pay their price, and, if he had, no means. The very house in which he lived, an inheritance, was already under treaty for sale. Frowning and compressing his lips, he descended to the room below. The something, stark and obvious under a black cloth, was laid already on the dissecting-table. Two gentlemen turned to greet him.
They were both grave, formal, unconvincing; yet perfectly refined in manner. One, who constituted himself the spokesman, began to address him at once in a low voice:
“You will please to pardon, sir, on the ground of extreme urgency, this unceremonious visit. I must say at once that we do not wish to state our names, and I will admit unhesitatingly that we are disguised. This”—he signified the silent shape—“is the subject of our visit. We desire your acceptance of it in the interests of science. No return is required, and no condition made, save that you undertake to convince yourself, beyond the possibility of a doubt, and before proceeding to extremities, that no flicker of life survives to it.”
Professionally self-possessed, the young doctor had yet to rally all his nerve-power to meet so amazing a charge. He delayed to answer for some moments.
“And if it did?” he said.