Captain Francis Newcombe made no answer. He too had heard the sounds in under here, but if Runnells were up to some more of his games it would avail Runnells very little now. Runnells' body, if there were by any chance some one ahead here in the darkness, made a most excellent and effective shield. It was inky black in here, and now underfoot, as they went forward, in place of the pure sand there were rocks and a slightly muddy bottom.
His left hand deposited the surplus revolver in his pocket, and in exchange drew out his flashlight. He thrust the flashlight out beyond Runnells' side in front of them both, and switched it on.
A cry broke on the instant from Runnells' lips—a cry of terror.
"Look! Look!" Runnells cried. "Let me go! Let me get out of here! This is a horrible, slimy, ghastly hole! Let me go—let me go! It's—it's a dead man!"
Captain Francis Newcombe's jaws had clamped. Into the focus of the round white ray had come the big concrete pier that supported the building in the centre, slime-draped, green and oozy now with the tide still low; and, nearer in again, a black ribbon of water, strangely like silk in its rippling under the light, for the sea wall way out beyond had lulled it here into the quiet almost of a pond, lapped at the shore, lapped and lapped, as though striving with hideous patience to creep yet another inch onward, and yet another, and always another, that it might reach a huddled thing that lay still several yards away.
A huddled thing!
Captain Francis Newcombe pushed Runnells ruthlessly forward until they both stood over it. And now the flashlight's ray played upon it—upon a twisted, crumpled form, a dead thing, a man whose clothes in places were in ribbons as though the very body had been mangled, a man in a white shirt sleeve where the sleeve of the coat had been torn away at the armpit, a man around whose neck and across whose face were long, horribly regular lines of round, lurid marks, near purple now against the bloodless skin.
And Runnells with a scream shrank back and covered his face with his hands.
"My Gawd!" he screamed out in terror. "It's Paul!" he screamed. "It's Paul Cremarre!"