ine? That would mean murder!"

"If he was thrown down there, already dead," answered Neale grimly, "it
would not only mean murder but that more than one person was concerned
in it. We shall know more when they've examined the body and searched
the clothing. I'm going round to the police-station when I've seen you
back to the hotel--I'm hoping they'll find something that'll settle the
one point that's so worrying."

"Which point?" asked Betty.

"The real critical point--in my opinion," answered Neale. "Who it was
that Hollis came to see on Saturday? There may be letters, papers, on
him that'll settle that. And if we once know that--ah! that will make a
difference! Because then--then----"

"What then?" demanded Betty.

"Then the police can ask that person if Hollis did meet him!" exclaimed
Neale. "And they can ask, too, what that person did with Hollis. Solve
that, and we'll see daylight!"

But Betty shook her head with clear indications of doubt as to the
validity of this theory.

"No!" she said. "It won't come off, Wallie. If there's been foul play,
the guilty people will have had too much cleverness to leave any
evidences on their victim. I don't believe they'll find anything on
Hollis that'll clear things up. Daylight isn't coming from that
quarter!"

"Where are we to look for it, then?" asked Neale dismally.

"It's somewhere far back," declared Betty. "I've felt that all along.
The secret of all this affair isn't in anything that's been done here
and lately--it's in something deep down. And how to get at it, and to
find out about my uncle, I don't know."

Neale felt it worse than idle to offer more theories--speculation was
becoming useless. He left Betty at the Scarnham Arms, and went round to
the police-station to meet Starmidge: together they went over to the
mortuary. And before noon they knew all that medical examination and
careful searching could tell them about the dead man.

Hollis, said the police-surgeon and another medical man who had been
called in to assist him, bore no marks of violence other than those
which were inevitable in the case of a man who had fallen seventy feet.
His neck was broken; he must have died instantaneously. There was
nothing to show that there had been any struggle previous to his fall.
Had such a struggle taken place, the doctors would have expected to find
certain signs and traces of it on the body: there were none. Everything
seemed to point to the theory that he