"No embarrassing questions, please! Now I'd like to have a look about, if I may."
"Yes, sir." Painfully anxious to escape any suspicion of withholding more information, Nelson hurriedly related the incident of the previous afternoon when he and Simon Varr had examined the tracks left by the incendiary. "There was some light rain last night, sir, but those I put the box over will be plain enough."
"Good. Show us where they are at once."
The watchman obeyed with alacrity.
Together the three men stood by the edge of the sluggish little brook and contemplated the tracks that Nelson indicated. The detective did not even take his eyes from them as he accepted and mechanically lighted one of the cigars that Krech offered his companions.
"Big feet!" said Krech presently.
"That's what Mr. Varr remarked yesterday, sir."
"Um." Creighton slowly came out of his trance. He pointed to a small piece of wood that lay down by the water's edge. "Krech, will you step down there and get that for me? I want to look at it."
"Sure." Astonished but amiable, the detective's willing assistant strode to the object indicated and retrieved it handsomely. His astonishment increased when Creighton, after turning it over two or three times in his hands, suddenly pitched it into the water. "Don't like it?"
"No. That's all I want here just now."