They were at the end of the ward now and Riley had stopped by a bed where a young man lay, white-faced, motionless. Only the clouding of his breath on a glass could have told if he was still alive. There was nothing for the eye to see.

Evan recognised him from the alley. The features were the same, the curve of eyelid, the almost black hair, rather long nose, sensitive mouth. The bruising did not hide that, and the blood had been cleared away. Evan found himself willing him to live, aching with the tension in his own body as if by strength of his feeling he could make it happen, and yet at the same time, terrified of the pain of it when he woke and felt his broken body, and his memory returned.

Who was he R. Duff? Was the older man related to him? And what had happened in that alley? Why had they been there? What appetite had taken them to such a place on a January night?

"Give me the trousers," Evan whispered, a wave of horror and revulsion returning to him. "I'll take them to the tailor.”

"You'd be better with the coat," Riley replied. "It's got the label on it, and there's less blood.”

"Less blood? The other man's coat was soaked in it!”

"I know." Riley shrugged his thin shoulders. "With this one it's the trousers. Maybe they all went down together in a scrum But if you want the tailor to be fit for anything, take the jacket. No need to give the poor man a turn.”

Evan took it after he had examined them both. Like the dead man's, they were torn in several places, filthy with mud and effluent from the gutter, and stained with blood on coat sleeves and tails, and the trousers were sodden.

Evan left the hospital horrified, exhausted in mind and spirit as well as body, and now so cold he could not stop shivering. He took a hansom home to his rooms. He would not get in an omnibus with that dreadful jacket and he had no wish to sit among other people, decent people at the end of their day's work, who had no idea of what he had seen and felt and of the young man who lay invisible in St. Thomas's, and who might or might not awaken again.