evious experience on former visits had, however,
taught him to expect nothing from it. The foreign Don was evidently an
advocate of temperance, like so many other foreigners who could not
drink good, honest English beer--well seasoned with noxious chemicals.

"Indeed," commented Don Juan, who had received several of these
mysterious visits before, and did not on that account expect much from
this one. "What have you discovered?"

"It 'pears," continued the police officer, "that just after dinner
to-day some children was playing in the little disused graveyard in the
rear of 190 Monmouth Street."

From being a listless listener I became an earnest one immediately; an
idea concerning that graveyard had crossed my mind that very morning
while I contemplated its dismal gravestones, almost hidden in old rank
grass, through the open ironwork forming the upper part of the gate
which shut it off from the little strip of sloping garden in rear of
190 Monmouth Street. In my walk backwards and forwards, while I waited
for Don Juan and the lawyer, Mr. Fowler, during their examination of
the safe, I had come back to that iron grating again and again. It had
somehow fascinated me.

"These 'ere children," proceeded the inspector, "was playing round the
gravestones, and jumpin' over 'em to keep warm. It was while they were
jumpin' and shovin' each other about over the graves that they noticed
that the top stone of a great flat old grave was loose, and, of course,
they started to make it looser by see-sawing it, until one fat boy
jumped it a bit too 'eavy, and it tilted and let him in."

"In where?" I asked quickly.

"Into a new-made grave, sir," he answered solemnly--"a grave what had
been dug recently under the old stone."

"Whatever for?" asked Don Juan.

"That's just where it is," replied the officer; "that's just what we
want to find out. The grave is about half filled in with loose earth.
We want to know what's under that loose earth, and that's why I'm here."

"What have we got to do with it?" asked the Don.

"The theory is, sir," replied Bull, "that _something_ is buried under
that loose earth. It may be stolen property. It may be a _body_."

I think both Don Juan and I whitened at the prospect disclosed by the
inspector, but the Don soon recovered himself. He did not seem so
affected by it as I imagined he would be.

"What do you propose to do?" he asked.

"We propose," answered the inspector, "to at on