And when Ilam had vanished out of sight, Carpentaria jumped up feverishly, seized the spade, leapt into the pit and began to dig—to dig with a fury of haste. Fate helped him, for the black mass was uncovered in less time than had been taken to cover it. He dragged it slowly out of the pit, and slowly, almost reluctantly, unwrapped it. He had been sure at the first touch that it was the body of a man, and he was not mistaken. In the gloomy night he could see the white patches made by the face and the hands. The body was not yet stiff. He hesitated, and then struck a match. He hoped the wind would blow it out, but the wind spared it; it flared bravely, and lighted the face of the corpse, and the corpse was that of the mysterious drunken man.
A thousand unanswerable questions fought together for solution in Carpentaria’s brain.
He knew himself to be in the presence of a crime, of a murder. His legal duty, therefore, was to fetch justice in the shape of a policeman. But he reflected that no battalion of policemen and judges could undo the crime, bring the dead to life, make innocent the guilty. He reflected also upon the clumsiness of State justice, and the inconveniences attaching to it, and upon the immeasurable harm its advent might do to the opening season of the City of Pleasure. Moreover, he had a horror of capital punishment, and he was a bold and original man, though an artist. He settled rapidly in his mind that he himself would probe the matter to its root, and that the justice involved should be the private justice of Carpentaria, not the public justice of the realm.
And a few minutes later he had discovered a long, flat barrow, and was wheeling away the burden that had bent the back of Josephus Ilam. He brought it circuitously and gently by way of the Sports Fields round again to the Central Way, and so to the neighbourhood of his own house. The night had now grown darker than ever, and a few drops of rain began to fall.
Suddenly, as he was approaching the two bungalows, he stopped and listened. He thought he heard footsteps; but no sound met his ear, and he raised the handles of the barrow again. By this time he was midway between the bungalows and about to turn to the side-entrance of his own. Once more he stopped; he distinctly did hear footsteps crushing the gravel.
“What is that? Anyone there?” cried a voice.
And it was Ilam’s voice, full of fear. Carpentaria crept away to the shelter of his own wall, leaving the barrow that had become a bier in the midst of the path. Vaguely and dimly he saw the form of Ilam coming down the avenue, saw it stop uncertainly before the barrow, saw it bend down, and then he heard a shriek—a shriek of terror—loud, violent, and echoing, and Ilam fled away. Carpentaria heard him mount the steps of his house and fumble with the door, and then he heard the bang of the door.
With all possible speed he rushed to the barrow, wheeled it into his garden, and thence to an outhouse, of which he carefully fastened the padlock.
He stood some time hesitant in the avenue, wondering whether any further singular phenomenon would proceed from the Ilam house that night. His curiosity was rewarded. A most strange procession emerged presently from the bungalow. First came old Mrs. Ilam, dressed in a crimson dressing-gown, a white nightcap on her head, and carrying a lamp with an elaborate drawing-room shade. Carpentaria could see that the lamp shook in her trembling hand. Her hands always trembled, but her head never. She came down the steps with the deliberation of extreme old age, peering in front of her, and she was followed, timorously, by her son. The lamp threw a large circle of yellow light on the ground, and at intervals Mrs. Ilam held it up high so that it illuminated the faces of mother and son. They came into the middle of the avenue. It was now seriously raining.
“I knew it wouldn’t be there,” Ilam whispered, in an awed tone. “It isn’t the sort of thing that stays. But I saw it—I saw the cloth and I saw a bit of its face.”