"With all due respect for the accuracy of your observations, and for the rigorous logic of your inductions, Sturgis," he asserted at last with decision, "I am positive that the man died seated, for his limbs stiffened in that position." "Yes," assented Sturgis, "and, for that matter, I grant you that he breathed his last in the cab; for in his death struggles he clutched in his left hand the curtain of the cab window, a piece of which remained in his dying grasp. I merely said that he was not shot in the cab." "Then how did he get there?" asked the physician. "Your question is premature, my dear fellow," replied Sturgis, smiling; "it must remain unanswered for the present. All we have established as yet is that he did get there. And that being the case, he must have been assisted; for, wounded as he was, he could not, I take it, have climbed into the cab by himself." "Certainly not," agreed Thurston. "Point five," resumed Sturgis, "the right arm was broken just above the wrist." "Yes," said the physician, "I thought at first that the arm might have been broken in the collision with the cable car; but the discoloration of the flesh proves conclusively that the fracture occurred before death." "Precisely. Now, it is possible that the man broke his arm when he fell, after being shot; but the contused wound looks to me as if it had been made by a severe blow with some blunt instrument." "Possibly," admitted Thurston. "This broken arm, if we can place it in its proper chronological position, may prove to be of some importance in the chain of evidence," mused Sturgis. "If the fracture occurred before the man was shot, that, of course, excludes the possibility of suicide; but, on the other hand, it also brings in an obstacle to the hypothesis of murder." "How so?" "Because we have settled, you will remember, that the shot was fired from the right of the victim, and close to him. Now, if he did not fire the shot himself, the person who did must have reached over his right arm to do so. In that case, unless the victim was asleep or stupefied, would he not instinctively have raised his arm in self-defence, and thus deflected the weapon upward?" "Evidently." "Well, it is idle to speculate on this line for the present. Let us come to point six. You remember I called your particular attention to the cabman. Do you still think he was only drunk?" "No," replied Thurston; "while he had unquestionably been drinking heavily, he also showed symptoms of narcotic poisoning." "Then the presumption is that he had been drugged by those who wished to place the wounded man in his cab. I observed him closely and I am satisfied that he knows as little about his dead passenger as we do. He probably knows less about him, at all events, than the young man in the sealskin cap who gave the police the slip during the excitement which followed the overturning of the cab." Sturgis paused a moment.