"Oh, my son!" groaned H.M.
"It didn't?"
"Not so's you could notice it All it showed was that Puckston had been lying, and there might be a lot of hokey-pokey in his statement But what hokey-pokey? No, son. The glarin' give-away is in the testimony of an honest witness, Simon Frew with the binoculars, supported by others. Frew was lookin' straight at Fleet from the middle gable. I'll read what he said, just as Masters read it to me."
H.M. fished among the papers at his side, drew out a blue-bound folder, and grubbed through it until he found what he wanted.
Sir George was there. I could see all round him. He bad his glasses to his eyes in one hand, and was waving with the other. Then it looked like somebody gave him a hard shove in the back. He stood there for a second. He shouted. He fell head-first.
HM. threw the folder back among the papers.
"If somebody gives you a hard shove in the back,’’ he said, pointing his cigar at his listeners, "you don't stand there for a second.' You go straight over. As Martin Drake can tell you.
"Nobody pushed Fleet, or the pusher would have been seen. Nobody threw a weight at him. Aside from no weight being found, and no place to throw without bein' seen, it would have made Fleet lurch or stagger even if he didn't pitch straight over. He still wouldn't 'stand there for a second.'
"When I read that first, I felt a frizzlin’ kind of feeling,’’— H.M. indicated his corporation, — “here. Like devils at work. Fleet was in pain, intense pain. Or weakness. Or both. That look ‘like a hard shove in the back' was muscular jerk and reaction which would give the same gestures.
"If you'll think about that for a bit, you'll get the key and the lock together. I didn't get that give-away straight off— being goop-witted, which the same I often am not — but I got it later."