a more detailed examination

Mahony followed her down a broad, bare passage. A number of rooms opened off it, but instead of entering one of these she led him out to a back verandah. Here, before a small door, she listened with bent head, then turned the handle and went in.
The room was so dark that Mahony could see nothing. Gradually he made out a figure lying on a stretcher-bed. A watcher sat at the bedside. The atmosphere was more than close, smelt rank and sour. His first request was for light and air.
It was the wreck of a fine man that lay there, strapped over the chest, bound hand and foot to the framework of the bed. The forehead, on which the hair had receded to a few mean grey wisps, was high and domed, the features were straight with plenty of bone in them, the shoulders broad, the arms long. The skin of the face had gone a mahogany brown from exposure, and a score of deep wrinkles ran out fan-wise from the corners of the closed lids. Mahony untied the dirty towels that formed the bandages — they had cut ridges in the limbs they confined — and took one of the heavy wrists in his hand.  It’s my opinion it would ha’ been a narrow squeak for him this time, if me and a mate hadn’t nipped in and got these bracelets on him. There he was, ravin’ and sweatin’ and cursin’ his head off, grey as death. Hell-gate, he called it, said he was devil’s-porter at hell-gate, and kept hollerin’ for napkins and his firesticks. Poor ol’ boss! It WAS hell for him and no mistake!”
By dint of questioning Mahony elicited the fact that Glendinning had been unseated by a young horse, three days previously. At the time, no heed was paid to the trifling accident. Later on, however, complaining of feeling cold and unwell, he went to bed, and after lying wakeful for some hours was seized by the horrors of delirium.
Requesting the lady to leave them, Mahony made a more detailed examination. His suspicions were confirmed: there was internal trouble of old standing, rendered acute by the fall. Aided by Saunderson, he worked with restoratives for the best part of an hour. In the end he had the satisfaction of seeing the coma pass over into a natural repose. How does it come that he lies in a place like this?” asked Mahony, as he dried his hands on a corner of the least dirty towel, and glanced curiously round. The room — in size it did not greatly exceed that of a ship’s-cabin — was in a state of squalid disorder. Besides a deal table and a couple of chairs, its main contents were rows and piles of old paper-covered magazines, the thick brown dust on which showed that they had not been moved for months — or even years. The whitewashed walls were smoke-tanned and dotted with millions of fly-specks; the dried corpses of squashed spiders formed large black patches; all four corners of the ceiling were festooned with cobwebs.
Saunderson shrugged his shoulders. “This was his den when he first was manager here, in old Morrison’s time, and he’s stuck to it ever since. He shuts himself up in here, and won’t have a female cross the threshold — nor yet Madam G. herself.