"It looks as if it had been an accident," answered the superintendent. "These men that found him noticed some broken railings at top of the quarry. They looked down and saw a body. So they made their way down and found--Stoner. It would seem as if he'd leaned or sat on the railings and they'd given way beneath him, and of course he'd pitched headlong into the quarry. It's fifty feet deep, Mr. Mayor! That's all one can think of. But Dr. Rockcliffe's with him now."
Mallalieu made a mighty effort to appear calm, as, with a grave and concerned face, he followed his guide into the place where the doctor, an official or two, and Cotherstone were grouped about the dead man. He gave one glance at his partner and Cotherstone gave one swift look at him--and there was something in Cotherstone's look which communicated a sudden sense of uneasy fear to Mallalieu: it was a look of curious intelligence, almost a sort of signal. And Mallalieu experienced a vague feeling of dread as he turned to the doctor.
"A bad job--a bad job!" he muttered, shaking his head and glancing sideways at the body. "D'ye make aught out of it, doctor? Can you say how it came about?"
Dr. Rockcliffe pursed up his lips and his face became inscrutable. He kept silence for a moment--when he spoke his voice was unusually stern.
"The lad's neck is broken, and his spine's fractured," he said in a low voice. "Either of those injuries was enough to cause death. But--look at that!"
He pointed to a contusion which showed itself with unmistakable plainness on the dead man's left temple, and again he screwed up his lips as if in disgust at some deed present only to the imagination.
"That's a blow!" he said, more sternly than before. "A blow from some blunt instrument! It was a savage blow, too, dealt with tremendous force. It may--may, I say--have killed this poor fellow on the spot--he may have been dead before ever he fell down that quarry."
It was only by an enormous effort of will that Mallalieu prevented himself from yielding to one of his shaking fits.
"But--but mightn't he ha' got that with striking his head against them rocks as he fell?" he suggested. "It's a rocky place, that, and the rocks project, like, so----"