Roger folded his arms and, striking a Napoleonic attitude, grinned down most un-Napoleonically at the other members of the alliance. “I have solved the Mystery of Ludmouth Bay, my children!” he announced. “Not alone I did it, for you, Margaret, put me on the right track, and yon pair of shoes also played their part. But the important thing is that the mystery is solved, and you can hold up your head again, Margaret, my dear, or your hands or your feet or anything else you jolly well like; nobody will say you nay.”
“Oh, Roger, do explain! Not—not Mrs. Russell?”
The grin died slowly out of Roger’s face. His imagination was his trade, yet it had simply never occurred to him that the rescue of Margaret meant the snaring of somebody else—that through his activities Mrs. Russell now stood in the perilous position from which Margaret had been plucked only just in time.
“I’m afraid so,” he nodded seriously. “And by the way, there’s one very obvious thing we overlooked about you, Margaret,” he went on, glancing at the neat little feet upon which he had so nearly landed. “However much the rest of the evidence might seem to compromise you, you were never in any real danger; that second lot of footprints was obviously never made by you, you see. Well, I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing.”
He dropped on to the turf, pulled out his pipe and began his story.
“I say, that’s great!” exclaimed Anthony in high glee, when he had finished.
“Oh, poor Mrs. Russell!” was Margaret’s comment, and Roger glanced at her with quick understanding. It was an echo of his own thoughts of a few minutes before.
They began to discuss the situation.
“Well, Anthony,” Roger remarked half-an-hour later. “Time we were getting back for lunch. And I want to hear what Moresby’s got to say, too.”
“Moresby’s going to get the shock of his young life,” observed Anthony grimly. “And I’m going to be in at the death.” Inspector Moresby, one gathered, had infringed upon Anthony’s code of things that aren’t done when he had the presumption to follow up a train of evidence to its logical conclusion—Margaret; henceforward there was no good in him.