"Easy! And why? Because of field-glasses. "Y’know, Masters kept goin' on at me and raving when I insisted there was only one thing I wanted to know: were they good field-glasses, nothing wrong or wonky about them?”
That would have been my question no matter how Fleet had been killed. Lord love a duck! Suppose you or I look through a pair of field-glasses, and the vision don't seem to come into focus when we fiddle with the wheel?
"Well, we get mad; we get a vague sort of idea there's something wrong with the scenery and turn 'em somewhere else. We look round. We take the glasses away from our eyes and examine 'em all ways. But, if they're good, we don't notice what's goin' on around us.
"Fleet didn't. That twelve-year-old maniac — with a certain boy's weapon you'll guess — crawled belly-flat like a red Indian under the ledge of the north wall, and then under the ledge of the east wall towards where his father was standing. Remember: not a soul looked round until shortly before Fleet fell. Once the boy was under that front ledge on the east side, nobody could see him; not even Puckston. I think Masters may have told a couple of you that people won't believe how small a space can hide a full-grown adult, let alone a small boy.
"I'd dismissed that possibility at first, because I kept thinkin' of somebody startin' a tussle with the legs or ankles of a powerful man like Fleet. And Masters never dreamed of a kid. But also remember: Ricky Fleet, as he'd told Stannard in the condemned cell at Pentecost, wasn't what you might call ordinary in another way. He could put-the-weight a distance of twenty seven feet three inches when he was eleven. A lot of grown men couldn't do that
"On he goes, just as crazy-excited as we've seen him on other occasions, with the music of the hunt to encourage him. The hounds were after the fox; he was after the wolf. He's carrying something out of the realm of sport but a nasty heavy weapon if you remember it's…"
"A cricket-bat!" Jenny whispered. "He told us they'd given him a new cricket-bat that week!"
"And when it's new," said H.M., "it's the whitest of white ash. Don't see it as an ordinary cricket-bat: see the heavy broadness taperin' on each side to the very-narrow-rounded edge that's like the edge of a wooden blade.
"One hand, lyin' flat with his left arm under him, was all Ricky Fleet needed. It was the narrow blade of the bat. Out and back it went: flash! open and shut! It smashed across the back of Fleet's legs just above the ankle, the most painful of all places. It fractured the bone in both legs without drawin' a drop of blood. Fleet jerked in horrible pain; he couldn't stand straight, and—
"That's all. After the first thirty seconds or so, no witness (see testimony!) was studyin' that roof. They all looked down at the terrace, while the boy crawled back by way of the north ledge. But I'm bettin' he never thought anybody could see him at any time, except maybe God.