“Well, we shan’t have any such satisfactory result in this case,” said the reporter. “Hello! What’s Bruce doing down here?” The life-guard from the Bow Hill station came hurrying to him. “They’ve just got in the life-line, Mr. Haynes,” he said, “and I examined it as you told me. It’s blood-soaked in the middle, and there are blood-stains all along the shoreward half. There’s nothing on the end toward the ship.” “Great Scott!” cried Colton, as the meaning of this poured light into his mind. “Then the poor fellow was killed between the ship and the shore!” “It looks that way,” said Haynes, scowling thoughtfully. “No, by Jove, it can’t be! I’ve missed a trick somewhere. There’s some other explanation.” “Mightn’t the blood-stains have got washed out?” suggested the guard. “Why should half of the rope be clean and not the other half, then?” countered Haynes. “You didn’t make a mistake as to which was the shore end of the buoy rope?” he cried in sudden hopefulness. “Bit o’ spar came in with the clean end,” returned Bruce briefly, and that hope was gone. “It’s at least curious,” observed Colton thoughtfully, “that the juggler’s shrinking from some aerial terror should so correspond with a murder in mid-air.” “You’re becoming pretty imaginative,” retorted the other disagreeably. “This crazy Whalley stabbed Petersen aboard the ship. What his motive was, or how he got away with it, or why the others don’t give him away, is beyond me. But he did the job, and this bogy-man scare of his is the weak cunning of a disordered mind to divert suspicion. Circumstantial evidence to the contrary, that’s what’s what!” Then, with his quick change of tone: “Princess! Oh, Princess!” “What is it, Petit Père?” said the girl. “Will you come along home with us?” “Right away. We don’t always welcome our guests with so much excitement, Dr. Colton,” she added, as she slipped her arm through Haynes’. After a moment’s pause she asked him: “Do you think Paul Serdholm knows anything of the—the murder?” “Why?”
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