eroplane. There are, it may be added, several stains, both on
the last page and on the outside cover, which have been pronounced by the
Home Office experts to be blood--probably human and certainly mammalian.
The fact that something closely resembling the organism of malaria was
discovered in this blood, and that Joyce-Armstrong is known to have
suffered from intermittent fever, is a remarkable example of the new
weapons which modern science has placed in the hands of our detectives.

And now a word as to the personality of the author of this epoch-making
statement. Joyce-Armstrong, according to the few friends who really knew
something of the man, was a poet and a dreamer, as well as a mechanic and
an inventor. He was a man of considerable wealth, much of which he had
spent in the pursuit of his aeronautical hobby. He had four private
aeroplanes in his hangars near Devizes, and is said to have made no fewer
than one hundred and seventy ascents in the course of last year. He was
a retiring man with dark moods, in which he would avoid the society of
his fellows. Captain Dangerfield, who knew him better than any one, says
that there were times when his eccentricity threatened to develop into
something more serious. His habit of carrying a shot-gun with him in his
aeroplane was one manifestation of it.

Another was the morbid effect which the fall of Lieutenant Myrtle had
upon his mind. Myrtle, who was attempting the height record, fell from
an altitude of something over thirty thousand feet. Horrible to narrate,
his head was entirely obliterated, though his body and limbs preserved
their configuration. At every gathering of airmen, Joyce-Armstrong,
according to Dangerfield, would ask, with an enigmatic smile: "And where,
pray, is Myrtle's head?"

On another occasion after dinner, at the mess of the Flying School on
Salisbury Plain, he started a debate as to what will be the most
permanent danger which airmen will have to encounter. Having listened to
successive opinions as to air-pockets, faulty construction, and
over-banking, he ended by shrugging his shoulders and refusing to put
forward his own views, though he gave the impression that they differed
from any advanced by his companions.

It is worth remarking that after his own complete disappearance it was
found that his private affairs were arranged with a precision which may
show that he had a strong premonition of disaster. With these essential
explan