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"Well there are witnesses that I brought the report to you. If Priddell is found dead on the ground to-morrow you'll have to answer for manslaughter." "'Ere, chuck it you snaike-seeing delirying trimmer, will yer! Give anyone the 'orrers to listen to yer!
Well, well! high time to rap again upon the door, the last door, of John Humphreyville Priddell, Trooper, ex-dairyhand, decaying carrion, and scare from his carcass such over-early visitants as anticipated.... How hollowly the blows re-echoed.
It would be intensely interesting, but in no wise terrifying or horrible. Presumably poor young Trooper Priddell was no more dangerous or dreadful in the spirit than he had been in the flesh.... Fortunate young man!
What was the meaning of it all? Was it pure chance and accident or had a Living, Scheming, Purposeful Deity a great wise object in this that John Humphreyville Priddell should have been born and bred and nurtured in the Vale of Froom to be struck from lusty life to a death of agony in a few hours at Motipur in the cruel accursed blighted land of Ind?
Would poor Priddell mind if he did not knock again? If it were the Snake it could do Priddell no harm now he being happily dead whereas, if disturbed, it might emerge to the utter undoing mind, body, and soul of Trooper Matthewson. It would certainly send him to Jail or Lunatic Asylum probably to both in due succession, for he was daily getting worse in the matter of the Snake.
Why, the Brahmins have a regular ritual for dealing with cases of recovery on the funeral pyre purification after defilement by the corpse-washers or something of the sort. These stupid oafs are letting poor Priddell die " "What! you drunken talkin' parrot," roared the incensed Sergeant. "'Ere, sling 'is drunken rotten carkis " "What's the row here?" cut in a quiet curt voice.
"Lucky fer 'im floggin's erbolished in the British Army." When the mortuary door was unlocked next morning a little force was required to open it, some obstacle apparently retarding its inward movement. The obstacle proved to be the body, now certainly the dead body, of Trooper Priddell who had died with his fingers thrust under the said door.
"Excuse me, Sir," broke in Dam, daring to address an Officer unbidden, since a life was at stake, "I am a total abstainer and Trooper Priddell is not dead. It must have been cataleptic trance. I heard him groan and I climbed up and saw him lying on the ground." "This man's not drunk," said Captain Blake, and added to himself, "and he's an educated man, and a cultured, poor devil."
Anyhow he would get it, and lots of strange, inexplicable, origin-forgotten rites would be observed over this piece of clay hitherto so cheaply held and roughly treated. Queer! As "Trooper Priddell" he was of no account. As a piece of fast-decaying carrion he would be the centre of a piece of elaborate ceremonial!
When Priddell is wrote off as 'Dead' 'e is dead, whether 'e likes it or no," and he turned to give orders to the listening guard to arrest Trooper Matthewson. The Sergeant of the Guard arrived at the "double," followed by Trooper Bear carrying a hurricane-lamp. "What's the row?" panted the Sergeant. "Matthewson on the booze agin?"
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