Then the demon at the doorway began, in pantomime, to dig with his spade, shovelling up imaginary earth from an imaginary grave; without a word he went through the postures necessary in dragging a heavy body to the graveside and flinging it in. Then he spat three times into the imaginary grave, and closed it in. All this without a word.
Then turning from his victim he went into the garden and began to dig the real grave.
Freyberger’s eyes travelled about the floor of the room; they lit upon an object, it was a sandbag. He knew now what had happened to him. Sandbagged on the road, dragged into this cottage, bound and gagged, he lay now waiting for the last act in the tragedy—his own burial.
The service for the burial of the dead would not be required over his grave, for, that Klein would bury him alive, he felt certain.
He lay listening to the patter of the rain on the leaves in the garden and the sound of the spade.
Incessant, rhythmical, it seemed wielded by a giant.
CHAPTER XLI
THAT night in London the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department sat in his office. It required ten minutes to midnight, and he had just laid down his pen after several hours’ hard work over official correspondence and reports.
The Goldberg case was still exercising the public mind, and several editors were asking the world from editorial easy chairs what the police were paid for.