"What do you make of it yourself?"
"Nothing. I'm entirely at sea."
Bede smiled a little and dropped his guarded air. "Well, he didn't turn it after he was hit, that's evident. Death was practically instantaneous. And the girl didn't turn it,--"
"The girl?"
"The woman you saw running across the street."
"Oh!"
Bede did not smile at the startled monosyllable. He only took quiet note of it, and went on without a break,
"--because a woman wouldn't touch a man who had been struck dead at her feet in the street. She would simply run away at once."
Lyon nodded attentively.
"And the man wouldn't have had time to do it after the girl ran away, because you were so near that you would have seen him if he had lingered in the neighborhood. He must have disappeared almost immediately."