Page:Melville Davisson Post--The Man of Last Resort.djvu/195

Rh bridge over Tug River, for the reason, as Brown Hirst always maintained, that in order to leave perfect circumstantial evidence it was absolutely necessary to actually do as far as possible the things which one desired the public to believe one had done.

“It was perhaps two o'clock, and very dark and wet. It had been raining for almost a week. This was largely in our favor, since the river at flood is deep and rapid, and a body lost in it when the water was running high would not probably be recovered at all, as we had noticed was the case with lumbermen not infrequently drowned; hence we had selected the time of heaviest rains in this region in order that the loss of the body should not seem a matter of unusual moment.

“It might be as well to explain that when Tug River is swollen by rains its channel beneath the bridge is very deep and rapid nearest its east shore, while near the west shore its bed is higher and covered with immense bowlders; thus anything thrown into this river on its east side would probably be carried away and lost, while if dropped from the bridge on the west