A breathy fulmination narrowed into a pinched squirt, and ended in a sudden crescendo of rippling fart and a finale which comprised a near-silent squeezing seamlessly becoming the release and falling of the turd. And yet there was no plop where one should have followed. His suspicions piqued, he knelt to look under the toilet door, but since it reached almost to the floor he lowered himself still further, appending to his person many sodden shreds of toilet paper and no small amount of common floor filth. Under the door he saw the explanation, but was scarcely relieved to be freed from his curiosity, for there between the squatting legs and feet of the defecator lay another whole body, upturned, and he knew then that the presence of an open gullet accounted for the absence of a splash.