e
police. Any remains that we discover will be deposited in the
mortuary, where you can inspect them to your heart's content; but you
can't stay here and watch us."

I had no defined object in keeping a watch on the inspector's
proceedings; but the sergeant's indiscreet hint had aroused my
curiosity, which was further excited by Mr. Badger's evident desire to
get rid of me. Moreover, while we had been talking, the pump had
stopped (the muddy floor of the pond being now pretty fully exposed),
and the inspector's assistant was handling the shovel impatiently.

"Now I put it to you, Inspector," said I, persuasively, "is it politic
of you to allow it to be said that you refused an authorized
representative of the family facilities for verifying any statements
that you may make hereafter?"

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean that if you should happen to find some bone which could be
identified as part of the body of Mr. Bellingham, that fact would be of
more importance to his family than to anyone else. You know that there
is a very valuable estate and a rather difficult will."

"I didn't know it, and I don't see the bearing of it now" (neither did
I for that matter); "but if you make such a point of being present at
the search, I can't very well refuse. Only you mustn't get in our way,
that's all."

On hearing this conclusion, his assistant, who looked like a
plain-clothes officer, took up his shovel and stepped into the mud that
formed the bottom of the pond, stooping as he went and peering among
the masses of weed that had been left stranded by the withdrawal of the
water. The inspector watched him anxiously, cautioning him from time
to time to "look out where he was treading"; the laborer left the pump
and craned forward from the margin of the mud, and the constable and I
looked on from our respective points of vantage. For some time the
search was fruitless. Once the searcher stooped and picked up what
turned out to be a fragment of decayed wood; then the remains of a
long-deceased jay were discovered, examined, and rejected. Suddenly
the man bent down by the side of a small pool that had been left in one
of the deeper hollows, stared intently into the mud, and stood up.

"There's something here that looks like a bone, sir," he sang out.

"Don't grub about then," said the inspector. "Drive your shovel right
into the mud where you saw it and bring it to the sieve."

The man followed out these inst