Henry Dunbar: A Novel

by M. E. Braddon

She drank about a teaspoonful, and then went on, speaking very rapidly, and in broken sentences—

"I followed the man, keeping a good way behind, so that he might not see that he was followed. He went straight down to the very place where—the murder was done. Clement was there, and three men. They were there under the trees, and they were dragging the water."

"Dragging the water! Oh, my God, why were they doing that?" cried the man, dropping suddenly on the chair nearest to him, and with his face livid.

For the first time since Margaret had entered the room terror took possession of him. Until now he had listened attentively, anxiously; but the ghastly look of fear and horror was new upon his face. He had defied discovery. There was only one thing that could be used against him—the bundle of clothes, the marked garments of the murdered man—those fatal garments which he had been unable to destroy, which he had only been able to hide. These things alone could give evidence against him; but who should think of searching for these things? Again and again he had thought of the bundle at the bottom of the stream, only to laugh at the wondrous science of discovery which had slunk back baffled by so slight a mystery, only to fancy the water-rats gnawing the dead man's garments, and all the oose and slime creeping in and out amongst the folds until the rotting rags became a very part of the rank river-weeds that crawled and tangled round them.

He had thought this, and the knowledge that strangers had been busy on that spot, dragging the water—the dreadful water that had so often flowed through his dreams—with, not one, but a thousand dead faces looking up and grinning at him through the stream—the tidings that a search had been made there, came upon him like a thunderbolt.

"Why did they drag the water?" he cried again.

His daughter was standing at a little distance from him. She had never gone close up to him, and she had receded a little—involuntarily, as a woman shrinks away from some animal she is frightened of—whenever he had approached her. He knew this—yes, amidst every other conflicting thought, this man was conscious that his daughter avoided him.

"They dragged the water," Margaret said; "I walked about—that place—under the elms—all the day—only one day—but it seemed to last for ever and ever. I was obliged to hide myself—and to keep at a distance, for Clement was there all day; but as it grew dusk I ventured nearer, and found out what they were doing, and that they had not found what they were searching for; but I did not know yet what it was they wanted to find."

"But they found it!" gasped the girl's father; "did they find it? Come to that."

"Yes, they found it by-and-by. A bundle of rags, a boy told me—a boy who had been about with the men all day—'a bundle of rags, it looked like,' he said; but he heard the constable say that those rags were the clothes that had belonged to the murdered man."