He sank exhausted against the wall, his eyes fixed upon the black hole through which his wife had disappeared; then, the stony glare changed suddenly to a look of realisation--horrible, stupefying. He crept to the edge and peered intently into the water, not six feet below, his eyes starting from his head.
Black, sobbing water, darkness impenetrable! The instinctive fear of apprehension caused him to look in every direction for possible eye-witnesses. Every drop of blood in his body seemed turned to ice with horror. Down there in that black, chill water lay the body of his wife, the woman he had loved through all these trying years, and he her murderer!
Terrified, trembling, panting, he tried to force himself into the water with the vague hope of saving her, after all; but even as he looked wildly about for help, a shout ready to spring from his dry throat, the natural dread of the accused facing his accuser took possession of him. Fear, abject fear, held him in grasp; he could not shout.
A man was running across the drive towards him--a long loping figure that covered the ground rapidly. With a last horrified look in the water, David Cable, craven for the moment, turned and fled through the night along the broken sea wall--fled aimlessly, his eyes unseeing, his feet possessed of wings. He knew not whither he ran, only that he was an assassin fleeing from the horrors behind.
Over the narrow strip of ground sped the long, eager figure that had darted from the shadow of the homes across the street. In hoarse, raucous tones he shouted after the fleeing man: "Stop! Wait! Halt!"
He dashed up to the spot where he had seen two figures but a moment before, the full horror of what had happened striking him for the first time. The man was Elias Droom, and he had been an eye-witness to the dim, indistinct tragedy at the sea wall.
His presence is easily explained. He knew of Bansemer's telephone message to Mrs. Cable, together with his threat to expose her on the following morning. It was only natural that she should make a final plea---that night, of course. The old clerk realised the danger of an encounter between his employer and his victim at a time so intense as this. He could not know that Bansemer would visit the Cable home that evening, but he suspected that such would be the case. It was his duty to prevent the meeting, if possible.
Bansemer would go too far, argued the old man; he must be stopped. That is why he lurked in the neighbourhood to turn Bansemer back before he could enter the home of David Cable.