seudo suicide defined and established.

Deliberately he extended his bare foot and nudged the man's ribs.

"Drummond...." he said in a clear voice, decided but unaggressive.

With an oath and what seemed a single, quick motion, the man jumped to
his feet and turned to Whitaker a startled and inflamed countenance.

"What the devil!" he cried angrily. "Who are you? What do you want? What
d'you mean by coming round here and calling me Drummond?"

He was no more Drummond than he was Whitaker himself.

Whitaker retreated a step, nonplussed. "I beg pardon," he stammered
civilly, in his confusion; "I took you for a fr--a man I know."

"Well, I ain't, see!" For a moment the man glowered at Whitaker, his
features twitching. Apparently the shock of surprise had temporarily
dislocated his sense of proportion. Rage blazed from his bloodshot,
sunken eyes, and rage was eloquent in the set of his rusty, square-hewn
chin and the working of his heavy and begrimed hands.

"Damn you!" he exploded suddenly. "What d'you mean by butting in--"

"For that matter"--something clicked in Whitaker's brain and
subconsciously he knew that his temper was about to take the
bridge--"what the devil do _you_ mean by spying on that lady yonder?"

It being indisputably none of his concern, the unfairness of the
question only lent it offensive force. It was quite evidently more than
the man could or would bear from any officious stranger. He made this
painfully clear through the medium of an intolerable epithet and an
attempt to land his right fist on Whitaker's face.

The face, however, was elsewhere when the fist reached the point for
which it had been aimed; and Whitaker closed in promptly as the fellow's
body followed his arm, thrown off balance by the momentum of the
unobstructed blow. Thoroughly angered, he had now every intention of
administering a sound and salutary lesson.

In pursuance with this design, he grappled and put forth his strength to
throw the man.

What followed had entered into the calculations of neither. Whitaker
felt himself suddenly falling through air thick with a blinding, choking
cloud of dust and sand. The body of the other was simultaneously
wrenched violently from his grasp. Then he brought up against solidity
with a bump that seemed to expel every cubic inch of air from his lungs.
And he heard himself cry out sharply with the pain of his weak ankle
newly twisted....

He sat up, gasping for breath, brushed the