The surgeon lighted another candle, which he placed on the window-sill, and then withdrew, accompanied by the Resurrection Man.
The Buffer shut the door of the dissecting-room, because the draught caused the candle to flicker, and menaced the light with extinction. He then proceeded to obey the directions which he had received from his accomplice.
The Buffer removed the sack from the body, which he then stretched out at length upon the inclined table, taking care to place its head on the higher extremity and immediately beneath the pulley.
"There, old feller," he said, "you're comfortable, at any rate. What a blessin' it would be to your friends, if they was ever to find out that you'd been had up again, to know into what skilful hands you'd happened to fall!"
Thus musing, the Buffer turned his back listlessly towards the corpse, and leant against the table on which it was lying.
"Let me see," he said to himself, "there's thirty-one pounds that was buried along with him, and then there's ten pounds that the sawbones is a paying now to Tony for the snatch; that makes forty-one pounds, and there's three to go shares. What does that make? Threes into four goes once—threes into eleven goes three and two over—that's thirteen pounds a-piece, and two pound to split—"
The Buffer started abruptly round, and became deadly pale. He thought he heard a slight movement of the corpse, and his whole frame trembled.
Almost at the same moment some object was hurled violently against the window; the glass was shivered to atoms; the candle was thrown down and extinguished; and total darkness reigned in the dissecting-room.
"Holloa!" cried the Buffer, turning sick at heart; "what's that?"
Scarcely had these words escaped his lips when he felt his hand suddenly grasped by the cold fingers of the corpse.