The cloven foot

by M. E. Braddon

And now they were taking him to the Morgue, the famous dead-house of the city, down by the river yonder. He was being carried in the midst of that dense crowd, which had been gathering ever since the bearers started with their ghastly burden, from the Porte St. Denis, where the accident happened. He was there in the centre of that mass of human life, an awful figure, covered from head to foot, and hidden from all those curious eyes.

Jack and his wife were borne along with the rest, past the great cathedral, down by the river, to the doors of the dead-house.

Here they all came to a stop: no one was allowed to enter save the dead man and his bearers, and three or four sergents de ville.

‘We must wait till they have made his toilet,’ said La Chicot to her husband, ‘and then we can go in and see him.’

‘What!’ cried Jack, ‘surely you would not wish to look at a piece of shattered humanity? He must be a dreadful sight, poor creature.’

‘On the contrary, monsieur,’ said some one near them in the crowd. ‘The poor man’s face was not injured. He is a handsome fellow, tanned by the sun; a seafaring man, a fine fellow.’

‘Let’s go in and see him,’ urged La Chicot, and when La Chicot wanted to do a thing she always did it.

So they waited amongst the crowd, close-packed still, though about two-thirds of the people had dropped off and gone back to their business or their pleasure; not because they shrank from looking upon death in its most awful aspect, but because the toilet might be long, and the spectacle was not worth the trouble of waiting a weary half-hour in the summer sun.

La Chicot waited with a dogged patience which was a part of her character when she had made up her mind about anything. Jack waited patiently too; for he was watching the faces in the crowd, and had an artistic delight in studying these various specimens of a somewhat debased humanity. Thus the half-hour wore itself out, the doors were opened, and the crowd poured into the dead-house, just as it would have poured into a theatre or a circus.

There he lay, the new-comer, with the summer light shining on him—a calm figure behind a sheet of glass, a brave, bronzed face, bearded, with strongly-marked brows and close-cropped black hair, gold rings in the ears, and on one bare arm, the arm which had escaped the wagon wheel, an inscription tattooed in purple and red.