I recover myself and am on the point of giving mad chase, when a thought strikes me and I rush into the building I have been all this time standing outside the door of. CHAPTER XXVII. AN UNEXPECTED MEETING. Tearing up the steps, I almost fell into the arms of our guide of the long, hideous night. “Can I see it?” I cried. “Steady, sir,” he said, staying and supporting me with a hand. “What’s up now?” “I want to see it--there was a letter--I----” “All property found on the body is took possession of.” “He saw it, I tell you.” “Your friend, there? So he did--but he gave it over.” “I’ll give it over. I don’t want to keep it, man. There was an address on it--there must have been, I swear; and if you don’t let me know it, there’ll be murder--do you understand?--murder!” No doubt he did understand. In such matters a policeman’s mind is intuitive. “Come along, then,” he said; “I’ll see what can be done,” and, holding me along the elbow in the professional manner, he led me through the building to a sort of outhouse that stood in a gloomy yard to the rear. Pushing open a door, he bid me enter and wait while he went and communicated with the inspector. The room I found myself in was like nothing so much as a ghastly species of scullery; built with a formal view to cleanliness and ventilation. All down its middle ran a long zinc-covered table, troughed slightly at the side and sloping gently like a fishmonger’s slab. Its purpose was evident in the drenched form that lay on it covered with a cloth. And to this sordid pass had come she, the loving and playful, with whom I had wandered a few short weeks ago among the green glades of the old forest. Now more than the solemnity of death pronounced us apart. I shivered and drew back, and then was aware of a man washing his hands at a sink that stood to one end of the room. He turned his head as he washed and looked at me. “Now, my man, what is it?” he said. He was lean, formal-faced and spectacled--a doctor by every uninviting sign of the profession. I told him my business and referred shrinkingly to the thing lying hidden there. “There isn’t, I suppose, any--any hope whatever?” “Oh, dear, no; not the least.” He came toward me pruning and trimming his cold finger-nails. “She has been in the water, I should say, quite eight hours, or possibly nine.” He pulled the cloth down slightly, with a speculative motion of his hand, so as to expose the white, rigid face. I had no time to stop him before its sightless eyes were looking up at me. “Oh, Dolly! Dolly! Such a fearful little woman, and yet with the courage to bring yourself to this!” Suddenly, through the heart of my wild pity pierced a thought that had already once before stirred unrecognized in me. “Doctor,” I said, staring down on the poor lifeless face, “do the drowned always look like that?” “Certainly they do, more or less.”