odd talk. A few
days after I came back to town I thought I would look him up, but when I
gave the two rings at the bell that used to summon him, there was no
answer. I rang and rang again, and was just turning to go away, when the
door opened and a dirty woman asked me what I wanted. From her look I
fancy she took me for a plain-clothes officer after one of her lodgers,
but when I inquired if Mr. Black were in, she gave me a stare of another
kind. "There's no Mr. Black lives here," she said. "He's gone. He's dead
this six weeks. I always thought he was a bit queer in his head, or else
had been and got into some trouble or other. He used to go out every
morning from ten till one, and one Monday morning we heard him come in,
and go into his room and shut the door, and a few minutes after, just as
we was a-sitting down to our dinner, there was such a scream that I
thought I should have gone right off. And then we heard a stamping, and
down he came, raging and cursing most dreadful, swearing he had been
robbed of something that was worth millions. And then he just dropped
down in the passage, and we thought he was dead. We got him up to his
room, and put him on his bed, and I just sat there and waited, while my
'usband he went for the doctor. And there was the winder wide open, and
a little tin box he had lying on the floor open and empty, but of course
nobody could possible have got in at the winder, and as for him having
anything that was worth anything, it's nonsense, for he was often weeks
and weeks behind with his rent, and my 'usband he threatened often and
often to turn him into the street, for, as he said, we've got a living
to myke like other people--and, of course, that's true; but, somehow, I
didn't like to do it, though he was an odd kind of a man, and I fancy
had been better off. And then the doctor came and looked at him, and
said as he couldn't do nothing, and that night he died as I was
a-sitting by his bed; and I can tell you that, with one thing and
another, we lost money by him, for the few bits of clothes as he had
were worth next to nothing when they came to be sold." I gave the woman
half a sovereign for her trouble, and went home thinking of Dr. Black
and the epitaph she had made him, and wondering at his strange fancy
that he had been robbed. I take it that he had very little to fear on
that score, poor fellow; but I suppose that he was really mad, and died
in a sudden access of his mania. His landlad