Sound of advancing voices, sound of advancing steps. Shuffle and talk without. Momentary pause. Two peculiarly blunt knocks or pokes at the door, as if the dead man arriving on his back were striking at it with the soles of his motionless feet.
‘That’s the stretcher, or the shutter, whichever of the two they are carrying,’ said Miss Abbey, with experienced ear. ‘Open, you Bob!’
Door opened. Heavy tread of laden men. A halt. A rush. Stoppage of rush. Door shut. Baffled boots from the vexed souls of disappointed outsiders.
‘Come on, men!’ said Miss Abbey; for so potent was she with her subjects that even then the bearers awaited her permission. ‘First floor.’
The entry being low, and the staircase being low, they so took up the burden they had set down, as to carry that low. The recumbent figure, in passing, lay hardly as high as the half door.
Miss Abbey started back at sight of it. ‘Why, good God!’ said she, turning to her two companions, ‘that’s the very man who made the declaration we have just had in our hands. That’s Riderhood!’
Chapter 3
THE SAME RESPECTED FRIEND IN MORE ASPECTS THAN ONE
In sooth, it is Riderhood and no other, or it is the outer husk and shell of Riderhood and no other, that is borne into Miss Abbey’s first-floor bedroom. Supple to twist and turn as the Rogue has ever been, he is sufficiently rigid now; and not without much shuffling of attendant feet, and tilting of his bier this way and that way, and peril even of his sliding off it and being tumbled in a heap over the balustrades, can he be got up stairs.