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own.
‘What’s the meaning of that?’ he asked.
‘We’re very short of bodies just now. We’ve had to put
two on each part.’
The dissecting-room was a large apartment painted like
the corridors, the upper part a rich salmon and the dado a
dark terra-cotta. At regular intervals down the long sides
of the room, at right angles with the wall, were iron slabs,
grooved like meat-dishes; and on each lay a body. Most of
them were men. They were very dark from the preserva-
tive in which they had been kept, and the skin had almost
the look of leather. They were extremely emaciated. The
attendant took Philip up to one of the slabs. A youth was
standing by it.
‘Is your name Carey?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, then we’ve got this leg together. It’s lucky it’s a man,
isn’t it?’
‘Why?’ asked Philip.
‘They generally always like a male better,’ said the atten-
dant. ‘A female’s liable to have a lot of fat about her.’
Philip looked at the body. The arms and legs were so thin
that there was no shape in them, and the ribs stood out so
that the skin over them was tense. A man of about forty-five
with a thin, gray beard, and on his skull scanty, colourless
hair: the eyes were closed and the lower jaw sunken. Philip
could not feel that this had ever been a man, and yet in the
row of them there was something terrible and ghastly.
‘I thought I’d start at two,’ said the young man who was