"Indeed," commented Don Juan, who had received several of these mysterious visits before, and did not on that account expect much from this one. "What have you discovered?"
"It 'pears," continued the police officer, "that just after dinner to-day some children was playing in the little disused graveyard in the rear of 190 Monmouth Street."
From being a listless listener I became an earnest one immediately; an idea concerning that graveyard had crossed my mind that very morning while I contemplated its dismal gravestones, almost hidden in old rank grass, through the open ironwork forming the upper part of the gate which shut it off from the little strip of sloping garden in rear of 190 Monmouth Street. In my walk backwards and forwards, while I waited for Don Juan and the lawyer, Mr. Fowler, during their examination of the safe, I had come back to that iron grating again and again. It had somehow fascinated me.
"These 'ere children," proceeded the inspector, "was playing round the gravestones, and jumpin' over 'em to keep warm. It was while they were jumpin' and shovin' each other about over the graves that they noticed that the top stone of a great flat old grave was loose, and, of course, they started to make it looser by see-sawing it, until one fat boy jumped it a bit too 'eavy, and it tilted and let him in."
"In where?" I asked quickly.
"Into a new-made grave, sir," he answered solemnly—"a grave what had been dug recently under the old stone."
"Whatever for?" asked Don Juan.
"That's just where it is," replied the officer; "that's just what we want to find out. The grave is about half filled in with loose earth. We want to know what's under that loose earth, and that's why I'm here."
"What have we got to do with it?" asked the Don.
"The theory is, sir," replied Bull, "that something is buried under that loose earth. It may be stolen property. It may be a body."