“I was lying in the cottage listening to this monster digging my grave, when, suddenly, I heard him fall crash amidst the weeds. I fainted, I believe. Mr Hellier will tell you the rest.”
“I had a reason for mixing myself up in this affair,” said Hellier; “and, reading of the murder of Bronson I came down to Sonning to make inquiries. I asked, had anyone come to live there lately? and I was told by a woman that a gentleman had taken a cottage on the Henley Road. Fortunately, she did not say an old gentleman, or I should not have gone there.
“I went to the cottage, knocked, could get no answer, and went round the backway.
“In the back garden, by a newly-dug grave, I found a man lying, with a spade clutched in his hand; he was dead. I found Mr Freyberger bound in the cottage, and I released him.”
“Klein must have dropped dead then?” said the chief.
“Yes,” replied Freyberger. “He died of heart-disease, accelerated by the excitement of digging my grave.”
“One last question,” said the Chief, “How about those initials tattooed on the body of Gyde?”
“They were tattooed after death,” replied Freyberger, “and as a blind. He had the art of tattooing post mortem and, strangely enough, it was this piece of cleverness that connected the cases in my mind and gave us our man.”
As Hellier left the Yard that night, somebody, who had followed him, touched him upon his shoulder. It was Freyberger.