He turned quickly and retraced his steps, and then stopped.
"He's had the pluck to do it," he muttered; "he must have thrown himself in farther up the river. The tide has washed him there and left him stranded. Poor beggar, I wonder who he is?"
He went down again and looked at the gruesome thing lying there. He lay in the shadow of the bridge, and the moon's rays did not reach him.
"I wonder who he is," repeated Leicester.
Almost mechanically, and with a steady hand, he struck a match and examined the body.
"It might have been me," he muttered. "About my own age and build. His clothes are good, too. I suppose this thing was what is called a gentleman." He laughed quietly and grimly. A sort of gruesome curiosity possessed him, and a wild fancy flashed into his mind. "I wonder if he's left any mark of his identity?" he said, whereupon he lit another match and made a closer examination. Yes, the thing's hands belonged to what was once a man of leisure. It is true they were discoloured and swollen, but they had been carefully manicured. Without a shudder he examined the pockets. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, in them—not even a pocket-handkerchief. The shirt was fastened at the wrists by a pair of gold sleeve-links, but they bore no marks of any sort. He unfastened the links and looked at the inside of the cuffs, but there was no name written on them. He fastened them again. He examined the dead man's collar. Again it was without name. Evidently the suicide had taken trouble to leave no traces of his identity behind.
He took another look at the face. Yes, it might have been himself, if he had been in the water a long time. It was the face of a young man, as far as he could judge, between thirty and forty. It was clean-shaven, too, just as his own was. It was true it was much distorted and discoloured; evidently the poor wretch had been in the water for days.
Almost mechanically he took out his handkerchief and wiped his hands. The light was bright enough to show him that his own name was in the corner.
"It might be me, it might be me," he repeated again and again.
There was a sort of fascination in the thought.