"Will you kindly step over this way for a few moments, Mr. Anstruther?" he asked. "I want to see if you can recognise the body which has been brought to the surface."
I let go the arm of Don Juan which I had been holding, and with a sickening feeling at my heart followed Inspector Bull. He led me towards the object lying on the old moss-grown tomb, and I could not summon the words to ask him who it was. There was a strong presentiment in my mind that I should look upon the dead face of the old lady at whose wish I had crossed the Atlantic.
We came to the body, over which a piece of sacking had been thrown, and this the inspector drew back, while one of the policemen held a lantern.
In its yellow light mingled with the clear moonbeams, I looked upon the face, and my heart gave a great leap of thankfulness. The face was perfectly fresh and recognisable. It was not the face of the old lady which I had feared to see, but that of a man with a coal-black beard, which seemed very familiar to me.
I had scarcely looked upon it when a cry came from the grave where the men were working, and they threw up a white bundle, evidently a bundle of linen.
This the inspector quickly opened, and displayed a heap of bedclothing and a pillow all stained with blood.
"Is that all?" asked the inspector, as the men jumped out of the hole.
"Yes, marster," the man replied, knocking the clay off his boots, "there's naught there now but the coffin of the old 'un, well-nigh moulderin' away, and the plate says he was one o' the old Mayors o' Bath."
I turned again to the exhumed body, and the recognition of it came to me in a flash.
It was the dark German who had helped to strap me in the chair in Cruft's Folly, when Saumarez was going to torture me.