"You see the body was picked up fifteen yards from the edge of the wood. If anyone had laid for him, they'd have laid right in the woods, where there was cover. But whatever hit him, it hit him before he reached there." "He might have run into something." "As what?" "I don't know." And there struck me instantly the thought that my companion put into words. "If you run into anything on a bicycle, at full speed, it doesn't generally happen that the handle-bars get the worst injury. You see that the front wheel was not much broken. And he was riding toward the woods, and it's going to take a pretty phenomenal shock to throw a man and his bicycle fifteen yards backwards. I'll tell you another thing. I happen to know that stretch of road, because I spent part of last summer near there, with some people. It's a level stretch, cleared both sides, and there isn't anything larger than a stone to run into." I waited, wondering what he was driving at. He chose a toothpick from the holder and began to employ it, leisurely. "You'd reckon those things would strike the jury, wouldn't you? But they're so dam' simple down here that they're content to come up against facts like that, and they say: Well, here's a man got killed and we don't know what hit him. Guess we'll let it go at misadventure and go get a drink!' That's their mental attitude, and there isn't anything going to shake them out of it." "What's your theory?" I asked. He revolved the toothpick meditatively. "If I knew, I guess I'd be up against a story that would make every newspaper in the country sit up. There's something queer there, and I'll tell you why, and you'll see just how enterprising these country juries are. Last April"--he raised his voice again, giving the toothpick an extra twirl in emphasis--"precisely the same thing happened to another man, not twelve miles from where this was. He was killed under much about the same circumstances, and the jury then returned the same old verdict, with a caution about the dangers of scorching. I happen to know, because I was down there on some story the time the thing occurred. I saw the man." He paused, and without knowing why I felt my pulses quicken suddenly in anticipation. "He had marks on his body that a wild-cat couldn't have made! He was picked up at the side of the path, among some stiff under-brush, so of course they said the fall did it. I tell you he was ripped, like I've seen a dog's face ripped by a badger. I've seen murder cases and I've seen accidents, but I've never seen the precise accident that would leave that kind of marks." "You think it was murder?"