Selecting the smallest stone, he threw it at the sparrow. With a shriek of insulted surprise the bird flew away. Haynes produced a pencil, with which he drew, upon the back of an envelope, a rough but pretty accurate map of the surroundings. He was putting on his shoes when Bruce came out of the gully. “See anything?” called Haynes. “Nothing moving to the northward,” replied Bruce, approaching. “Have you found anything?” “Not that you could call definite. Don’t cross the sand there. Keep along down. We’ll go to Sand Spit and report this.” But the man was staring beyond the little column of rock shelters. “What’s that thing?” he said, pointing to the nearest unsheltered print. “My God! It looks like a bird track. And it leads straight to the body!” he cried in a voice that jangled on Haynes’ nerves. But when he began to look fearfully overhead, into the gathering darkness, drawing in his shoulders like one shrinking from a blow, that was too much. Haynes jumped up, grabbed him by the arm and started him along. “Don’t be a fool!” he said. “Keep this to yourself. I won’t have a lot of idiots prowling around those tracks. Understand? You’re to report this murder, and say nothing about what you don’t know. Later we’ll take it up again.” The man seemed stunned. He walked along quietly, close to his companion, to whom it was no comfort to feel him, now and again, shaken by a violent shudder. They had nearly reached the station, when Professor Ravenden and Colton came down to the beach in front of them. Colton had nothing to tell. The professor reported having started up a fine specimen of sky-blue butterfly, which led him astray. This went to show, he observed, that a man never should venture out lacking his net. “Whalley might have bumped into him, and he probably wouldn’t have noticed it,” remarked Haynes aside to Colton. “It takes something really important, like a bug, to attract the scientific notice. A mere murderer doesn’t count.” “Then you’ve found evidence against the juggler?” asked Colton eagerly. “I’ve found nothing,” returned the reporter, “that’s any clearer than a bucket of mud.” He refused to say anything more until they were close to the station. Then he tested a hopeless theory. “The man wasn’t stabbed; he was shot,” he observed. “What’s the use?” said Colton. “You know that’s no bullet wound. You’ve seen the same thing twice before, not counting the sheep, and you ought to know. The bullet was never cast that could open such a gap in a man’s head. It was a broad-bladed, sharp instrument with power behind it.” “To Dr. Colton’s opinion I must add my own for what it is worth,” said Professor Ravenden. “Can you qualify as an expert?” asked the reporter with the rudeness of rasped nerves. He was surprised at the tone of certainty in the scientist’s voice as he replied: