him just
now--we hear all the bits of news in a little place like Highmarket.
Well--you'll understand, likely--it hadn't been long done!"

"You noticed that?" said Brereton.

"I touched him," replied Garthwaite. "His hand and cheek were--just
warm. He couldn't have been dead so very long--as I judged matters.
And--here he is!"

He twisted sharply round the corner of one of the great masses of
limestone which cropped out amongst the trees, and turned the light of
the lantern on the dead man.

"There!" he said in a hushed voice. "There!"

The four men came to a halt, each gazing steadily at the sight they had
come to see. It needed no more than a glance to assure each that he was
looking on death: there was that in Kitely's attitude which forbade any
other possibility.

"He's just as I found him," whispered Garthwaite. "I came round this
rock from there, d'ye see, and my foot knocked against his shoulder.
But, you know, he's been dragged here! Look at that!"

Brereton, after a glance at the body, had looked round at its
surroundings. The wood thereabouts was carpeted--thickly carpeted--with
pine needles; they lay several inches thick beneath the trunks of the
trees; they stretched right up to the edge of the rock. And now, as
Garthwaite turned the lantern, they saw that on this soft carpet there
was a great slur--the murderer had evidently dragged his victim some
yards across the pine needles before depositing him behind the rock. And
at the end of this mark there were plain traces of a struggle--the soft,
easily yielding stuff was disturbed, kicked about, upheaved, but as
Brereton at once recognized, it was impossible to trace footprints in
it.

"That's where it must have been," said Garthwaite. "You see there's a
bit of a path there. The old man must have been walking along that path,
and whoever did it must have sprung out on him there--where all those
marks are--and when he'd strangled him dragged him here. That's how I
figure it, Mr. Cotherstone."

Lights were coming up through the wood beneath them, glancing from point
to point amongst the trees. Then followed a murmur of voices, and three
or four men came into view--policemen, carrying their lamps, the man
whom Garthwaite had sent into the town, and a medical man who acted as
police surgeon.

"Here!" said Bent, as the newcomers advanced and halted irresolutely.
"This way, doctor--there's work for you here--of a sort, anyway. Of
course, he's dead?"