"Aye!" he said musingly, with a final look round. "A nasty place to fall over, and a bad job--a bad job! Them rails," he continued, pointing to the broken fencing, "why, they're rotten all through! If a man put his weight on them, they'd be sure to give way. The poor young fellow must ha' sat down to rest himself a bit, on the top one, and of course, smash they went."
"That's what I should ha' said, your Worship," agreed the policeman, "but some of 'em that were up here seemed to think he'd been forced through 'em, or thrown against 'em, violent, as it might be. They think he was struck down--from the marks of a blow that they found."
"Aye, just so," said Mallalieu, "but he could get many blows on him as he fell down them rocks. Look for yourself!--there's not only rough edges of stone down there, but snags and roots of old trees that he'd strike against in falling. Accident, my lad!--that's what it's been--sheer and pure accident."
The policeman neither agreed with nor contradicted the Mayor, and presently they went down to the bottom of the quarry again, where Mallalieu, under pretence of thoroughly seeing into everything, walked about all over the place. He did not find the stick, and he was quite sure that nobody else had found it. Finally he went away, convinced that it lay in some nook or cranny of the shelving slope on to which he had kicked it in his sudden passion of rage. There, in all probability, it would remain for ever, for it would never occur to the police that whoever wielded whatever weapon it was that struck the blow would not carry the weapon away with him. No--on the point of the stick Mallalieu began to feel easy and confident.
He grew still easier and more confident about the whole thing during the course of the afternoon. He went about the town; he was in and out of the Town Hall; he kept calling in at the police-station; he became certain towards evening that no suspicion attached to himself--as yet. But--only as yet. He knew something would come out. The big question with him as he went home in the evening was--was he safe until the afternoon of the next day? While he ate and drank in his lonely dining-room, he decided that he was; by the time he had got through his after-dinner cigar he had further decided that when the next night came he would be safely away from Highmarket.