IN mid-air, horse and rider, unhit, appeared suspended for a long moment, silhouetted against the sky. Then the actor put spurs to his mount and deliberately pulled at the reins. The gallant steed quivered and jerked its head back. Strong men closed their eyes as it stopped in that graceful parabola, to drop like a plummet to the earth beneath. They knew it truly had been a leap of death!

Back in the small chop house, Walter Dawson was hurriedly scribbling as Inspector Corot talked.

"You know," observed the veteran detective, "I can't forgive that fellow Lane for sacrificing such a noble animal. It was so needless; he could have jumped off himself." He paused to light a cigar. "I wonder what will become of the dog?"

"Funny I didn't get that crack about my subconscious mind," chuckled Dawson. "It was the propertyman's talk that set you on the track."

"Only in a way," confessed Corot. "The trick of the murder was responsible for its own solution. Guess I'd better give it to you in sequence, though, for your sensational yarn. Well, Ned Lane's name was really Nate Lavie, and under it he married Helen Schneider, a country girl, in Wisconsin. At the time he was working with a fly-by-night circus as a ballyhoo for the side-show, and a knife-thrower. The circus collapsed in Pennsylvania, where Lane abandoned his girl-wife, who was about to give birth to a child. Eventually he drifted to California and hung about the movie lots. It was his ability as a knife thrower when he was an extra playing a Mexican bandit that brought him to the attention of the director. That, and the acquisition of a performing horse from his old circus boss, and the fact that he had been a cowboy of sorts, put him over. That act that I saw in that two-year-old film was the clue that broke the mystery! It sent me to the old circus owner and along the long trail to the murder on Stage A.

THE young woman, who was known to us as Helene Storme, was left adrift and penniless. Her infant was born under the most pitiful circumstances, and after a long illness, she made her way to New York. There Tad Boone found her, working as a cashier.

"Then the Ajax Company brought Ned Lane on from Hollywood. Helene recognized him and resolved to expose him. From what her colored maid said, he must have offered her money, which she refused. She could ruin him with that pitiful story—and he knew it. So he contrived a trick murder, based on his old knife-throwing act. From the mezzanine gallery he watched his chance when no one was near, to switch out the lights, threw the knife with deadly accuracy, pulled it back by means of a strong Jap fishing line, and with another throw buried the murderous blade in the rafters above him. Almost simultaneously with that last act, he switched the lights on, the entire episode taking less time than it takes to tell it. Of course it was an easy matter for him to drop to the main floor—he was used to such stunts—in the midst of the excitement."

Dawson looked up at Corot as he finished

jotting down his notes. "It's a whale of a story, Inspector," he said. "While I never thought of Lane, my judgment told me Tad Boone could never have committed the crime, and Holmes was too putty-legged."

The police officer treated the reporter to one of his quizzical smiles.

"You never can tell," he observed drily. "The instinct to murder finds itself into brains of all types—sometime or other."