“No,” mused Dick. “Whalley must have carried the body out and dropped it where it was found.” “For what conceivable reason.” “Perhaps some idea that he was hiding it better. Perhaps for no reason at all. Reason plays little part in an insane murderer’s processes.” “But an insane murderer leave tracks the same as any other man, and unless Haynes was completely fooled there were no such tracks or breakage of the shrubbery around the spot where you found the body, as must have been made by a man breaking his way through, particularly if he were carrying a heavy body.” “What are you driving at?” asked Colton. “Well,” said the reporter thoughtfully, “this Ely business seems to me just about the strangest phase of this whole mystery. And it’s the strangest, most incomprehensible features of a problem that most often give you your clue.” “Have you found one?” “I’ve been thinking of another possible cause of such fractures as you described. Might not a fall have caused them?” “Not unless it was from a height. And how could he have fallen from a height?” “That is what I should like to know,” said Eldon Smith. “The scrub-oak where you found the body is badly smashed down—much more crushed and broken than the mere toppling over of a man would account for.” Swift light broke in upon Colton. “That is what Haynes was trying to determine when he fell into the oak,” he cried. “Trust him for that. Did he get down on his hands and knees afterward?” “Yes,” cried the doctor. “What was he after?” “He was examining a deep indentation in the ground beneath the shrubbery that just fits a man’s head and shoulders as it would strike were the man falling headlong.” “Headlong? From the empty air?” “From the empty air,” assented the other. “You mean that his kites were a sort of flying-machine?” “It may be. Or he may have become entangled in the lines and carried up after vainly struggling through the shrubbery.” “But the wound? Could he have struck on some sharp-pointed stake, and wriggled off in his death convulsions?” mused Colton. “You’re a physician. Could he?” “No, no, a thousand times no!” “Well?” “It was Whalley,” said Dick Colton reflectively. “Perhaps the kite-flyer fell near him, and in his unreasoning terror Whalley used his knife. And his own fear that he spoke of, of the terror impending over him, may have driven him to the murder.” “It must be so,” said the reporter. “I see nothing else for it. But I don’t believe it all the same.” “Well, I don’t know that I do, either, for that matter,” said Colton, as they drew in at the station. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN READJUSTMENTS