Five dollars would have
purchased everything in sight. The floor was bare, while the walls and
ceiling were literally covered with blood marks and splotches. Each mark
represented a violent death--of an insect, for the place swarmed with
vermin, a plague with which no person could cope single-handed.
The man who had occupied this hole, one Dan Cullen, docker, was dying in
hospital. Yet he had impressed his personality on his miserable
surroundings sufficiently to give an inkling as to what sort of man he
was. On the walls were cheap pictures of Garibaldi, Engels, Dan Burns,
and other labour leaders, while on the table lay one of Walter Besant's
novels. He knew his Shakespeare, I was told, and had read history,
sociology, and economics. And he was self-educated.
On the table, amidst a wonderful disarray, lay a sheet of paper on which
was scrawled: _Mr. Cullen, please return the large white jug and
corkscrew I lent you_--articles loaned, during the first stages of his
sickness, by a woman neighbour, and demanded back in anticipation of his
death. A large white jug and a corkscrew are far too valuable to a
creature of the Abyss to permit another creature to die in peace.
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