The narrow garden had not been opened for the day. There was a gate opposite the end of the road, another gate leading out on the Embankment opposite that. Between the two gates a grimy statue rose upon a granite pedestal, a meditative figure clad to the heels in some nondescript garment, and gazing across the river as he sat with a number of discarded volumes under his chair. It was a peculiarly lifelike monument, which Pocket would have been just the boy to appreciate at any other time; even now it struck him for an instant, before his attention was attracted to the group of commonplace living people on the Embankment beyond the narrow garden. They were standing together on the far side of one of the fixed seats. There was the policeman who had blown the whistle, and a small but motley crew who had answered to the call. Conspicuous units were a gentleman in dressing-gown and pyjamas, a couple of chimneysweeps, and a labouring cyclist on his way to work. They had formed a circle about some hidden object on the ground; and long before the new-comers could run round and join them, the schoolboy had steeled himself to look upon another murdered man. He was in no hurry to look; apart from a natural dread of death, which he had seen for the first time, and then unwittingly, only the other morning, it was the murderer and not his victim of whom the boy was thinking as he arrived last upon the scene. It was Dr. Baumgartner whom he half expected to see swimming the river or hiding among the bushes in the enclosed garden; for he was not one of the group on the Embankment; and how else could he have made his escape? The point was being discussed as Pocket came into earshot; all he could see of the fallen man was the soles of his boots upright among living legs. “Is he dead?” he asked of one of the chimneysweeps, who was detaching himself from the group with the air of a man who had seen the best of the fun. “Dead as an ’erring,” replied the sweep cheerfully. “Sooicide in the usual stite o’ mind.” “Rats!” said the other sweep over a sooty shoulder; “unless ’e shot ’isself first an’ swallered the shooter afterwards! Some’un’s done ’im in.” Pocket set his teeth, and shouldered his way into the group. His father was already in the thick of it, talking to the stout man in spectacles, who had risen miraculously from the ground and was busy brushing his trouser-knees. Pocket forced himself on with much the same nutter he had taken into the Chamber of Horrors, but with an equal determination to look just once upon Dr. Baumgartner’s latest victim. A loud cry escaped him when he did look; for the murdered man, and not the murderer, was Dr. Baumgartner himself. CHAPTER XX. WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP