We arrived with the coroner fortunately just before the removal of the body to the city and by his courtesy were able to see it without any trouble.

Death, and especially violent death, are at best grewsome subjects, but when to that are added the sordid surroundings of a country undertaker’s and the fact that the victim is a woman, it all becomes doubly tragic.

She was a rather flashily dressed girl, but remarkably good looking, in spite of the rouge and powder which had long since spoiled what might otherwise have been a clear and fine complexion.  The roots of her hair showed plainly that it had been bleached.

Garrick examined the body closely, and more especially the jagged wound in the breast.  I bent over also.  It seemed utterly inexplicable.  There was, he soon discovered, a sort of greasy, oleaginous deposit in the clotted blood of the huge cavity in the flesh.  It interested him, and he studied it carefully for a long time, without saying a word.

“Some have said she was wounded by some kind of blunt instrument,” put in the coroner.  “Others that she was struck by a car.  But it’s my opinion that she was killed by a rifle bullet of some kind, although what could have become of the bullet is beyond me.  I’ve probed for it, but it isn’t there.”

Garrick finished his minute examination of the wound without passing any comment on it of his own.

“Now, if you will be kind enough to take us around to the place where the body was discovered,” he concluded, “I think we shall not trespass on your time further.”

In his own car, the coroner drove us up the road in the direction of the New York state boundary to the spot where the body had been found.  It was a fine, well-oiled road and I noticed the number and high quality of the cars which passed us.

When we arrived at the spot where the body of the unfortunate girl had been discovered, Garrick began a minute search.  I do not think for a moment that he expected to find any weapon, or even the trace of one.  It seemed hopeless also to attempt to pick out any of the footprints.  The earth was soft and even muddy, but so many feet had trodden it down since the first alarm had been given that it would have been impossible to extricate one set of footprints from another, much less to tell whether any of them had been made by the perpetrators of the crime.

Still, there seemed to be something in the mud, just off the side of the road, that did interest Garrick.  Very carefully, so as not to destroy anything himself which more careless searchers might have left, he began a minute study of the ground.

Apparently he was rewarded, for, although he said nothing, he took a hasty glance at the direction of the sun, up-ended the camera he had brought, and began to photograph the ground itself, or rather some curious marks on it which I could barely distinguish.

The coroner and I looked on without saying a word.  He, at least, I am sure, thought that Garrick had suddenly taken leave of his senses.