himself had used, about going mad in the middle of the night and wrecking the
stone figure. Just so, he could fancy, the maniac who had done such a thing
might climb the crest of the hill, in that feverish dancing fashion, and look
down on the wreck he had made. But the wreck he had made here was not
only a wreck of stone.
When the man emerged at last on to the garden path, with the full light on
his face and figure, he was walking slowly indeed, but easily, and with no
appearance of fear.
"This is a terrible thing," he said. "I saw it from above; I was taking a stroll
along the ridge."
"Do you mean that you saw the murder?" demanded March, "or the
accident? I mean did you see the statue fall?"
"No," said Archer, "I mean I saw the statue fallen."
Prince seemed to be paying but little attention; his eye was riveted on an
object lying on the path a yard or two from the corpse. It seemed to be a rusty
iron bar bent crooked at one end.
"One thing I don't understand," he said, "is all this blood. The poor fellow's
skull isn't smashed; most likely his neck is broken; but blood seems to have
spouted as if all his arteries were severed. I was wondering if some other
instrument . . . that iron thing, for instance; but I don't see that even that is
sharp enough. I suppose nobody knows what it is."
"I know what it is," said Archer in his deep but somewhat shaky voice.
"I've seen it in my nightmares. It was the iron clamp or prop on the pedestal,
stuck on to keep the wretched image upright when it began to wobble, I
suppose. Anyhow, it was always stuck in the stonework there; and I suppose it
came out when the thing collapsed."
Doctor Prince nodded, but he continued to look down at the pools of blood
and the bar of iron.
"I'm certain there's something more underneath all this," he said at last.
"Perhaps something more underneath the statue. I have a huge sort of hunch
that there is. We are four men now and between us we can lift that great
tombstone there."
They all bent their strength to the business; there was a silence save for
heavy breathing; and then, after an instant of the tottering and staggering of
eight legs, the great carven column of rock was rolled away, and the body
lying in its shirt and trousers was fully revealed. The spectacles of Doctor
Prince seemed almost to enlarge with a restrained radiance like great eyes; for
other things were revealed also. One was that the unfortunate Hewitt had a