something of a sensation.
The monstrous stone image of Britannia was lying prone and face
downward on the garden path; and there stuck out at random from underneath
it, like the legs of a smashed fly, an arm clad in a white shirt sleeve and a leg
clad in a khaki trouser, and hair of the unmistakable sandy gray that belonged
to Horne Fisher's unfortunate uncle. There were pools of blood and the limbs
were quite stiff in death.
"Couldn't this have been an accident?" said March, finding words at last.
"Look for yourself, I say," repeated the harsh voice of Herries, who had
followed him with restless movements out of the door. "The papers are gone, I
tell you. The fellow tore the coat off the corpse and cut the papers out of the
inner pocket. There's the coat over there on the bank, with the great slash in
it."
"But wait a minute," said the detective, Prince, quietly. "In that case there
seems to be something of a mystery. A murderer might somehow have
managed to throw the statue down on him, as he seems to have done. But I bet
he couldn't easily have lifted it up again. I've tried; and I'm sure it would want
three men at least. Yet we must suppose, on that theory, that the murderer first
knocked him down as he walked past, using the statue as a stone club, then
lifted it up again, took him out and deprived him of his coat, then put him back
again in the posture of death and neatly replaced the statue. I tell you it's
physically impossible. And how else could he have unclothed a man covered
with that stone monument? It's worse than the conjurer's trick, when a man
shuffles a coat off with his wrists tied."
"Could he have thrown down the statue after he'd stripped the corpse?"
asked March.
"And why?" asked Prince, sharply. "If he'd killed his man and got his
papers, he'd be away like the wind. He wouldn't potter about in a garden
excavating the pedestals of statues. Besides—Hullo, who's that up there?"
High on the ridge above them, drawn in dark thin lines against the sky, was
a figure looking so long and lean as to be almost spidery. The dark silhouette
of the head showed two small tufts like horns; and they could almost have
sworn that the horns moved.
"Archer!" shouted Herries, with sudden passion, and called to him with
curses to come down. The figure drew back at the first cry, with an agitated
movement so abrupt as almost to be called an antic. The next moment the man
seemed to reconsider and collect himself, and began to come down the zigzag
garden path, but with obvious reluctance, his feet falling in slower and slower
rhythm. Through March's mind were throbbing the phrases that this man