The Uttermost Farthing | Page 2

matter at my time of life?"
I looked at him in consternation as he stood, breathing quickly, with
that uncanny smile on his enormous face. It was highly unprofessional
of me, no doubt, but there was little use in attempting to conceal my
opinion of his case. Something inside his chest was pressing on the
great veins of the neck and arms. That something was either an
aneurysm or a solid tumor. A brief examination, to which he submitted
with cheerful unconcern, showed that it was a solid growth, and I told
him so. He knew some pathology and was, of course, an excellent
anatomist, so there was no avoiding a detailed explanation.
"Now, for my part," said he, buttoning up his waistcoat, "I'd sooner
have had an aneurysm. There's a finality about an aneurysm. It gives
you fair notice so that you may settle your affairs, and then, pop! bang!
and the affair's over. How long will this thing take?"
I began to hum and haw nervously, but he interrupted: "It doesn't
matter to me, you know, I'm only asking from curiosity; and I don't
expect you to give a date. But is it a matter of days or weeks? I can see
it isn't one of months."

"I should think, Challoner," I said huskily, "it may be four or five
weeks--at the outside."
"Ha!" he said brightly, "that will suit me nicely. I've finished my job
and rounded up my affairs generally, so that I am ready whenever it
happens. But light your pipe and come and have a look at the museum."
Now, as I knew (or believed I knew) by heart every specimen in the
collection, this suggestion struck me as exceedingly odd; but reflecting
that his brain might well have suffered some disturbance from the
general engorgement, I followed him without remark. Slowly we
passed down the corridor that led to the "museum wing," walked
through the ill-smelling laboratories (for Challoner prepared the bones
of the lower animals himself, though, for obvious reasons, he acquired
the human skeletons from dealers) and entered the long room where the
main collection was kept.
Here we halted, and while Challoner recovered his breath, I looked
round on the familiar scene. The inevitable whale's skeleton--a small
sperm whale--hung from the ceiling, on massive iron supports. The side
of the room nearest the door was occupied by a long glass case filled
with skeletons of animals, all diseased, deformed or abnormal. On the
floor-space under the whale stood the skeletons of a camel and an
aurochs. The camel was affected with rickets and the aurochs had
multiple exostoses or bony tumors. At one end of the room was a large
case of skulls, all deformed or asymmetrical; at the other stood a long
table and a chest of shallow drawers; while the remaining long side of
the room was filled from end to end by a glass case about eight feet
high containing a number of human skeletons, each neatly articulated
and standing on its own pedestal.
Now, this long case had always been somewhat of a mystery to me. Its
contents differed from the other specimens in two respects. First,
whereas all the other skeletons and the skulls bore full descriptive
labels, these human skeletons were distinguished merely by a number
and a date on the pedestal; and, second, whereas all the other specimens
illustrated some disease or deformity, these were, apparently, quite
normal or showed only some trifling abnormality. They were

beautifully prepared and bleached to ivory whiteness, but otherwise
they were of no interest, and I could never understand Challoner's
object in accumulating such a number of duplicate specimens.
"You think you know this collection inside out," said Challoner, as if
reading my thoughts.
"I know it pretty well, I think," was my reply.
"You don't know it at all," he rejoined.
"Oh, come!" I said. "I could write a catalogue of it from memory."
Challoner laughed. "My dear fellow," said he, "you have never seen the
real gems of the collection. I am going to show them to you now."
He passed his arm through mine and we walked slowly up the long
room; and as we went, he glanced in at the skeletons in the great case
with a faint and very horrible smile on his bloated face. At the extreme
end I stopped him and pointed to the last skeleton in the case.
"I want you to explain to me, Challoner, why you have distinguished
this one by a different pedestal from the others."
As I spoke, I ran my eye along the row of gaunt shapes that filled the
great case. Each skeleton stood on a pedestal of ebonized wood on
which was a number and a date painted in white, excepting the end one,