The next moment two men came hurriedly round the edge of the rock, and
found the man standing alone. Even in his bewilderment he realised that
if he told the truth he would not be believed.




WHICH WAS THE MURDERER?


Mrs. John Forder had no premonition of evil. When she heard the hall
clock strike nine she was blithely singing about the house as she
attended to her morning duties, and she little imagined that she was
entering the darkest hour of her life, and that before the clock struck
again overwhelming disaster would have fallen upon her. Her young
husband was working in the garden, as was his habit each morning before
going to his office. She expected him in every moment to make ready for
his departure down town. She heard the click of the front gate, and a
moment later some angry words. Alarmed, she was about to look through
the parted curtains of the bay-window in front when the sharp crack of
a revolver rang out, and she hastened to the door with a vague sinking
fear at her heart. As she flung open the door she saw two things--
first, her husband lying face downwards on the grass motionless, his
right arm doubled under him; second, a man trying frantically to undo
the fastening of the front gate, with a smoking pistol still in his
hand.

Human lives often hang on trivialities. The murderer in his anxiety to
be undisturbed had closed the front gate tightly. The wall was so high