Analysing Textual Passages 14

Read the following passage from the story ‘The Bet’ and answer the questions
that follow.
At the table a man unlike ordinary people was sitting motionless. He was a
skeleton with the skin drawn tight over his bones, with long curls like a woman’s
and a shaggy beard. His face was yellow with an earthy tint in it, his cheeks
were hollow, his back long and narrow and the hand on which his shaggy
head was propped was so thin and delicate that it was dreadful to look at it.
His hair was already streaked with silver and seeing his emaciated, aged-
looking face, no one would have believed that he was only forty. He was
asleep.... In front of his bowed head there lay on the table a sheet of paper on
which there was something written in fine handwriting.
‘Poor creature!’ thought the banker, ‘he is asleep and most likely dreaming of
the millions. And I have only to take this half-dead man, throw him on the
bed, stifle him a little with the pillow, and the most conscientious expert would
find no sign of a violent death. But let us first read what he has written here...’
1. Why was the man described as ‘unlike ordinary people’?
2. What impressions do you get while looking at the man?
3. Who could be the ‘most conscientious expert’ that the banker had in his
mind?
4. Why did the banker think that taking the man’s life was quite simple?
5. Look at the following sentence from the passage.
‘At the table a man unlike ordinary people was sitting motionless.’
Here ‘at the table’ is used before the subject ‘a man’. Pick out one such sentence
from the passage.