Moreover, while we had been talking, the pump had stopped (the muddy floor of the pond being now pretty fully exposed), and the inspector's assistant was handling the shovel impatiently.
"Now, I put it to you, Inspector," said I, persuasively, "is it politic of you to allow it to be said that you refused an authorised representative of the family facilities for verifying any statements that you may make hereafter ?" "What do you mean ?" he asked.
"I mean that if you should happen to find some bone which could be identified as part of the body of Mr.Bellingham, that fact would be of more importance to his family than to anyone else.

You know that there is a very valuable estate and a rather difficult will." "I didn't know it, and I don't see the bearing of it now" (neither did I, for that matter); "but if you make such a point of being present at the search, I can't very well refuse.

Only you mustn't get in our way, that's all." On hearing this conclusion, his assistant, who looked like a plain-clothes officer, took up his shovel and stepped into the mud that formed the bottom of the pond, stooping as he went and peering among the masses of weed that had been left stranded by the withdrawal of the water.

The inspector watched him anxiously, cautioning him from time to time to "look out where he was treading"; the labourer left the pump and craned forward from the margin of the mud, and the constable and I looked on from our respective points of vantage.

For some time the search was fruitless.