"Exactly. Yet if a man had time to call out that way, he'd at least have time to run. A man can take a big jump in a second, Fargo."
Fargo's voice fell. "Perhaps he couldn't run."
"Ah!" The coroner paused. "Because he was in the grasp of his assailant?"
"Yet he still had his strength left. Nealman was a man among men, wasn't he, Fargo?"
"Indeed he was!" Fargo's eyes snapped. "I'd like to see any one deny it."
"He wasn't a coward then. He'd fight as long as he had a chance, instead of giving all his energies to yelling for help--help that could not reach him short of many seconds. In other words, Nealman knew that he didn't have the least kind of a fighting chance. He was in the grasp of his assailant so he couldn't run. And his assailant was strong--and powerful enough--that there was no use to fight him."
It was curious how his voice rang in that silent room. Fargo had leaned back in his chair, as if the words struck him like physical blows. A negro janitor at one side inhaled with a sharp, distinct sound.
"It might have been more than one man," Fargo suggested uneasily.
"I don't know. It's wholly a blank to me."
"Would you say that cry was given while he was in the water?"
"I hardly think so. I'm slightly known as a swimmer, Mr. Weldon--was once, anyway, and I know something about the water. A drowning man can't call that loud. Mr. Nealman was a corking good swimmer himself--nothing fancy at all, but fairly well able to take care of himself. When he disappeared the tide was running out--the lagoon on this side of the rock wall was still as glass. If Mr. Nealman, through some accident or other, fell in that lagoon he'd swim out--unless he was held in. At least he'd try to swim out. And by the time he found out he couldn't make the shore, he'd be so tired he couldn't cry out like he did last night."
"I see your point. I don't know that it would always work out. Occasionally a man--simply loses his nerve."
"Not Nealman--in still water, most of which isn't over five feet deep."
"'Unless he was held in,' you say. What do you think held him in?"
Fargo's hands gripped his chair-arms. "Mr. Weldon, I don't know what you want me to say," he answered clearly. "I feel the same way about this mystery that I felt about the other--that human enemies did him to death. I don't think anything held him in. I think he was dead before ever he was thrown into the water. I think two or three men--perhaps only one--surrounded him--probably pointed a gun at him. He yelled for help, and they killed him--probably with a knife or black-jack. That's the whole story."