The cab stopped, but it was all in vain. The loafer, who had opened the other door of the cab with swift deftness while Clarke spoke to the driver, had long since turned a near corner with box and daggers, and was well away. Clarke, standing in the street, glanced up at the sky, down at the ground, and stared round about, like a man who does not know in which world he finds himself.
Meantime, Furneaux hailed another cab, again having to pay in advance, and started off on the drive to Brompton Cemetery—where Winter was already in hiding, awaiting his arrival.
Something like a storm of wind was tearing the night to pieces, and the trees of the place of graves gesticulated as if they were wrangling. The moon had moved up, all involved in heavy clouds whose grotesque shapes her glare struck into garish contrasts of black against silver. Furneaux bent his way against the gale, holding on his dilapidated hat, his rags fluttering fantastically behind him, till he came to the one grave he sought—the cheerless resting-place of Rose de Bercy. The very spirit of gloom and loneliness brooded here, in a nook almost inclosed with foliage. As yet no stone had been erected. The grave was just a narrow oblong of red marl and turf, which the driven rain now made soft and yielding. On it lay two withered wreaths.
Furneaux, standing by it, took off his hat, and the rain flecked his hair. Then from a breast-pocket of his rags he took out a little funnel of paper, out of which he cast some Parma violets upon the mound. This was Thursday—and Rose de Bercy had been murdered on a Thursday.
Then from a breast-pocket he took a little funnel of paper
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After that he stood there perhaps twenty minutes, his head bent in meditation.
Then he peered cautiously into the dark about him, took a penknife with a good-sized blade from a pocket, and with it set to work to make a grave within the grave—a grave just big and deep enough to contain the box with the daggers. He buried his singular tribute and covered it over.
After this he waited silently, apparently lost in thought, for some ten minutes more.