Page:The Eyes of Max Carrados.pdf/238

236 worse in here." He jerked off the upper part of the rough coverlet and exposed a visage that caused Mr Carlyle to turn away with a "Tch, tch!" of emotion. Then a sense of duty drew him round again and he proceeded to note the descriptive points of the dead man in his pocket-book.

"No marks of violence, I suppose?" he asked.

"Nothing beyond the usual abrasions that we always find. A clear case of drowning—suicide—it seems to be."

"And the things?"

The inspector nodded towards a seedy suit laid out for identification and an overcoat, once rakish of its fashion and now frayed and mouldering, put with it.

"Fur collar too, Mr Carlyle," pointed out his guide. "'Velvet and rags,' isn't it? 'Where moth and rust doth corrupt.' A sermon could be made out of this."

"Very true; very true indeed," replied Mr Carlyle, who always responded to the sentimentally obvious. "It is a sermon, inspector. But what have we here?"

Beside the garments had been collected together a heap of metal discs—quite a considerable heap, numbering some hundreds. Carlyle took up a few and examined them. They were all alike—flat, perfectly round and somewhat under an inch in diameter. They were quite plain and apparently of lead.

"H'm, curious," he commented. "In his pockets?"

"Yes; both overcoat pockets. Very determined, wasn't he? They would have kept him down till the Day of Judgment. I've counted them—just five hundred."

"Any money?"

The inspector smiled his tragi-comic appreciation—