Don Juan touched me on the arm. His hand trembled fearfully.
"Let us come away and walk a little," he said; "the strain of this affair is too much for me."
I took his arm and walked away with him towards the gate, where now quite a little crowd had assembled, attracted by the lanterns round the grave.
Knowing the Don's fondness for smoking and its soothing effect upon him, I handed him my cigar case, and he took a cigar and lit it. There seemed to be something in the aroma of the fine Havannahs as I lit one, too, that dispelled the lurking mouldiness of the old burial ground.
"But for those children playing around that tomb this afternoon," remarked d'Alta, "this body might have lain there undiscovered for years. It was a cunning mind which thought of using an old grave as a receptacle for a fresh body."
We strolled backwards and forwards on the grass-grown pathway, and I kept the old gentleman as far as I could from the open grave. The voice of the doctor giving directions and the muffled answers of the men working in the excavation came to us occasionally.
Presently, as we turned in one of our walks, I saw the labourers had come out of the grave and were hauling at something, assisted by the two policemen.
As I checked the Don in our walk, and looked on, a white mass was raised from the opening and laid by the doctor's direction on an adjacent flat tomb.
I shuddered as I saw the whiteness of it in the moonlight, and my thoughts reverted to the blood-stained figure of the old lady which I had last seen lying on her bed in the house in Monmouth Street.
The workmen went down into the grave again, and Inspector Bull came towards us.