tself with unmistakable
plainness on the dead man's left temple, and again he screwed up his
lips as if in disgust at some deed present only to the imagination.

"That's a blow!" he said, more sternly than before. "A blow from some
blunt instrument! It was a savage blow, too, dealt with tremendous
force. It may--may, I say--have killed this poor fellow on the spot--he
may have been dead before ever he fell down that quarry."

It was only by an enormous effort of will that Mallalieu prevented
himself from yielding to one of his shaking fits.

"But--but mightn't he ha' got that with striking his head against them
rocks as he fell?" he suggested. "It's a rocky place, that, and the
rocks project, like, so----"

"No!" said the doctor, doggedly. "That's no injury from any rock or
stone or projection. It's the result of a particularly fierce blow dealt
with great force by some blunt instrument--a life preserver, a club, a
heavy stick. It's no use arguing it. That's a certainty!"

Cotherstone, who had kept quietly in the background, ventured a
suggestion.

"Any signs of his having been robbed?" he asked.

"No, sir," replied the superintendent promptly. "I've everything that
was on him. Not much, either. Watch and chain, half a sovereign, some
loose silver and copper, his pipe and tobacco, a pocket-book with a
letter or two and such-like in it--that's all. There'd been no robbery."

"I suppose you took a look round?" asked Cotherstone. "See anything that
suggested a struggle? Or footprints? Or aught of that sort?"

The superintendent shook his head.

"Naught!" he answered. "I looked carefully at the ground round those
broken railings. But it's the sort of ground that wouldn't show
footprints, you know--covered with that short, wiry mountain grass that
shows nothing."

"And nothing was found?" asked Mallalieu. "No weapons, eh?"

For the life of him he could not resist asking that--his anxiety about
the stick was overmastering him. And when the superintendent and the two
policemen who had been with him up to Hobwick Quarry had answered that
they had found nothing at all, he had hard work to repress a sigh of
relief. He presently went away hoping that the oak stick had fallen into
a crevice of the rocks or amongst the brambles which grew out of them;
there was a lot of tangle-wood about that spot, and it was quite
possible that the stick, kicked violently away, had fallen where it
would never be discovered. And--there