p,
effortless. But when my fingers came to the nearest one--the right
hand--I found that it was stiff, rigid, stone-cold. I knew then that
Salter Quick had been dead for several hours; had probably been lying
there, murdered, all through the darkness of the night.

There were no signs of any struggle. At this point the sands were
unusually firm and for the most part, all round and about the body,
they remained unbroken. Yet there were footprints, very faint indeed,
yet traceable, and I saw at once that they did not extend beyond this
spot. There were two distinct marks; one there of boots with nails in
the heels; these were certainly made by the dead man; the other
indicated a smaller, very light-soled boot, perhaps a slipper. A yard
or so behind the body these marks were mingled; that had evidently
been done when the murderer stole close up to his victim, preparatory
to dealing the fatal thrust.

Carefully, slowly, I traced these footsteps. They were plainly
traceable, faint though they were, to the edge of the low cliff, there
a gentle slope of some twelve or fifteen feet in height; I traced them
up its incline. But from the very edge of the cliff the land was
covered by a thick wire-like turf; you could have run a heavy gun
over it without leaving any impression. Yet it was clear that two men
had come across it to that point, had then descended the cliff to the
sand, walked a few yards along the beach, and then--one had murdered
the other.

Standing there, staring around me, I was suddenly startled by the
explosion of a gun, close at hand. And then, from a coppice, some
thirty yards away, a man emerged, whom I took, from his general
appearance, to be a gamekeeper. Unconscious of my presence he walked
forward in my direction, picked up a bird which his shot had brought
down, and was thrusting it into a bag that hung at his hip, when I
called to him. He looked round sharply, caught sight of me, and came
slowly in my direction, wondering, I could see, who I was. I made
towards him. He was a middle-aged, big-framed man, dark of skin and
hair, sharp-eyed.

"Are you Mr. Raven's gamekeeper?" I asked, as I got within speaking
distance. "Just so--I am staying with Mr. Raven. And I've just made a
terrible discovery. There is a man lying behind the cliff
there--dead."

"Dead, sir?" he exclaimed. "What--washed up by the tide, likely."

"No," I said. "He's been murdered. Stabbed to death!"

He let out a short, sibilant