Armed only with a powerful flashlight and a good-sized hammer, he went out to the kitchen and through that to the cellar.
There, he went straight to the old well, and testing the rope as he did so, he let the bucket down as far as it would go. Then, with monkey-like agility he began to clamber down,—partly supported by clinging to the rope, partly by getting firm footholds on the old stones that lined the well.
Scarcely had he started, when he experimentally drew his hand across the stones, and by his flashlight perceived a green smear, the counterpart of that on Zizi’s frock. Also, the counterpart of that on Martha’s hand.
Yet, the dead girl could scarcely have been in the well! So,—her assailant must have been.
However, he went on investigating.
He noted carefully the walls as he descended, and it was not until he almost reached the bottom of the dried-up old well, that he noticed anything strange.
All of the wall was very rough and uneven but here was what appeared to be a distinct hole, roughly filled in with loose stones.
Standing now on the bottom of the well, slippery with moisture but no water above his shoe soles, he used his hammer to dislodge these stones, working carefully and slowly, but with a certainty of success.
“Fool that I was,” he chattered to himself, “not to come down here the very first thing! To trust to Zizi was all right,—the kid couldn’t notice this place,—but I had no business to trust that half-baked sheriff or his man!”
His work soon disclosed the fact that the loose stones apparently closed the mouth of a deep hole.