It is John Burrill!
Lying there, half buried still, with clenched hands and features distorted. It is John Burrill, dead.
Clifford Heath utters a sharp exclamation. He starts forward suddenly, and looks, not upon the dead face, but straight at the white thing that is still held in the hand of one of the masons. Then he snatches it from the man fiercely, looks at it again and more closely, and lets it fall from his grasp. For a moment all is black to his vision, and over his face a ghastly pallor creeps. Slowly, slowly, he lifts his hand to his forehead, rests it there for a moment, and seems making an effort to think. Then he drops his hand; he lifts his head; he draws himself erect.
"O'Meara," he says, in a voice strangely hollow and unfamiliar, and pointing to the fallen handkerchief. "Look at that. I am going home; when you want me you will find me there." And without having so much as glanced at the dead face so near him, he goes slowly towards his cottage, holding his head proudly erect still.
Mr. O'Meara turns away from the corpse, and gazes for a moment after the retreating form of his friend; then he picks up the handkerchief; it is of softest linen, and across one corner he reads the embroidered name of Clifford Heath. For a moment he stands with the telltale thing held loosely in his hand, and then he bends down, spreads it once more over the dead face, and turns to the men.
"This body must not be disturbed further," he says, authoritatively. "One of you go at once and notify Soames, and then Corliss. Fortunately, Soames lives quite near. Don't bring a gang here. Let's conduct this business decently and in order. Do you go, Bartlett," addressing the younger of the two men. "We will stay here until the mayor comes."
And Lawyer O'Meara buttons his coat tightly about him and draws closer to the cellar wall, the better to protect himself from the drip, drip, of the rain.
"It is a horrible thing, sir," ventured the mechanic, drawing further away from the ghastly thing outlined, and made more horrible, by the wet, white covering. "It's a fearful deed for somebody, and—it looks as if the right man wasn't far away; we all know how he and Burrill were—"
"Hold your tongue, man," snapped O'Meara, testily, "keep 'what we all know' until you are called on to testify. I have something to think about."
And he does think, long and earnestly, regardless of the rain; regardless alike of the restless living companion and of the silent dead.