“Because if we leave it till a Christian time to-morrow,” Roger explained patiently, “Moresby will certainly forestall us. And if there is anything interesting in the way of clues to be found there, we shall decidedly never see it, and probably never even hear of it, if we let Moresby get there first.”
“Oh!” said Anthony.
They gained the ledge and made their way cautiously along its narrow width.
“By the way,” Anthony remarked airily, “Margaret was asking—that is, do you happen to know whether that infernal inspector has still got any comic ideas about Margaret in his head?”
“How the average Englishman does shirk a plain statement of unpleasant fact,” Roger murmured. “He’d rather use a hundred innocent words to wrap up his perfectly obvious meaning than half-a-dozen blunt ones. You mean, I suppose, does Moresby still think that Margaret murdered her cousin? Well, I don’t know. I did try to sound him, but he’s indecently reticent on the subject. On the whole I’m inclined to think that his ideas on that point are a little less rigid than they were.”
“Well, thank God the fellow’s beginning to see a little sense at last,” was Anthony’s pious comment.
They progressed the rest of the way in silence, busy with their respective thoughts.
“Walk carefully, Anthony,” Roger remarked as they approached the scene of the tragedy. “We don’t want to leave our footprints at any rate. Try to tread only on dry rock.”
They picked their steps with elaborate caution.
Roger halted and flashed his torch round him. “This is the spot. You haven’t been here before, have you? That’s just about where she fell off, by that little cleft on the edge. Now you sit down on that boulder in front of you while I look round. We don’t want to leave more traces than we need, and my tread is probably rather more catlike than yours.” He began to poke about among the crevices and loose boulders at the back of the ledge.