His appointment on the staff was in abeyance--in fact, the vacancy on which it was expectant had not definitely occurred--and all things were at sixes and sevens with poor Dick Devereux.
That evening, strange to say, Sturk was still living; and Toole reported him exactly in the same condition.

But what did that signify?
'Twas all one.

The man was dead--as dead to all intents and purposes that moment as he would be that day twelvemonths, or that day hundred years.
Dr.Walsingham, who had just been to see poor Mrs.Sturk--now grown into the habit of hoping, and sustained by the intense quiet fuss of the sick room--stopped for a moment at the door of the Phoenix, to answer the cronies there assembled, who had seen him emerge from the murdered man's house.
'He is in a profound lethargy,' said the worthy divine.

''Tis a subsidence--his life, Sir, stealing away like the fluid from the clepsydra--less and less left every hour--a little time will measure all out.' 'What the plague's a clepsydra ?' asked Cluffe of Toole, as they walked side by side into the club-room.
'Ho! pooh! one of those fabulous tumours of the epidermis mentioned by Pliny, you know, exploded ten centuries ago--ha, ha, ha!' and he winked and laughed derisively, and said, 'Sure you know Doctor Walsingham.' And the gentlemen began spouting their theories about the murder and Nutter, in a desultory way; for they all knew the warrant was out against him.
'My opinion,' said Toole, knocking out the ashes of his pipe upon the hob; for he held his tongue while smoking, and very little at any other time; 'and I'll lay a guinea 'twill turn out as I say--the poor fellow's drowned himself.

Few knew Nutter--I doubt if _any_ one knew him as I did.