The physician pondered in silence for a few minutes.
"With all due respect for the accuracy of your observations, and for the rigorous logic of your inductions, Sturgis," he asserted at last with decision, "I am positive that the man died seated, for his limbs stiffened in that position."
"Yes," assented Sturgis, "and, for that matter, I grant you that he breathed his last in the cab; for in his death struggles he clutched in his left hand the curtain of the cab window, a piece of which remained in his dying grasp. I merely said that he was not shot in the cab."
"Then how did he get there?" asked the physician.
"Your question is premature, my dear fellow," replied Sturgis, smiling; "it must remain unanswered for the present. All we have established as yet is that he did get there. And that being the case, he must have been assisted; for, wounded as he was, he could not, I take it, have climbed into the cab by himself."
"Certainly not," agreed Thurston.
"Point five," resumed Sturgis, "the right arm was broken just above the wrist."
"Yes," said the physician, "I thought at first that the arm might have been broken in the collision with the cable car; but the discoloration of the flesh proves conclusively that the fracture occurred before death."
"Precisely. Now, it is possible that the man broke his arm when he fell, after being shot; but the contused wound looks to me as if it had been made by a severe blow with some blunt instrument."
"Possibly," admitted Thurston.