"That he faked illiteracy was a pure surmise, a mere possibility, until now, when it gains color from the evidence of the footprints. A mental twist that would make a small man disguise himself as a large one would make an educated man resort to illiteracy. Logical, I think."
"Very likely. But how did you get this from footprints?"
"They were too shallow. I noticed that at once, and proved it by parading yours alongside them. That fellow wore shoes as big as yours and was running to boot, but his tracks were scarcely half the depth of those you made. Get it?"
"Oh, yes," said Krech rather mournfully. "Two and two always make four when you add them up. They never run to more than three and a half for me." He sighed. "Creighton, I'd like once—just for once—to score a beat over you!"
"Well, you may do it in this very case," remarked his friend encouragingly. "You never can tell."
XV: Treasure Trove
The instant they stepped into the house they knew that the police had left it. A calm, almost holy, peace seemed to have settled upon the place, a far more fitting atmosphere considering the motionless form that lay in a room upstairs, its eyes closed and its face more reposeful than ever it had been in life. "I bring peace," wrote some long-forgotten craftsman on the blade of the dagger he had just fashioned, and in some measure wrote the truth.
"And I've got to stir them all up again," said Creighton half regretfully.
"Can't make omelets without breaking eggs," was the responsive platitude from Herman Krech. "I suppose you mean you're going to start in asking questions."