"Yes, I did notice that, because I thought he must be even nastier than I'd thought, to let… "
Bennett got up. He put his hand slowly under the hood of the fireplace, touched lightly, and withdrew it stained in soot.
"Like this?" he asked. "Yes. I saw the marks myself. Well, the fires were out down at the pavilion. The chimneys are enormous, and have iron steps for the chimney-sweep on the inside. Rainger took off his coat for greater freedom when he tested whether he could manage it. He found it could be done. So he waited patiently until John should come down there. He had to turn out the light a long time before daylight, in case somebody over at the stables should see an all-night light, and grow curious. But he had to keep striking matches in the dark, match after match, to look at his watch. He left the front door of the pavilion open. It would be time to act when he heard John's footsteps.
"You still don't see it? When John discovered the body, Rainger was in the chimney. He knew that he was fairly safe when the inevitable search of the house occurred. It did occur. John and I undertook it. While we were in the back part of the house…"
"But he still had to leave the pavilion!"
And now Bennett remembered the terrible subdued triumph of Maurice's face when Maurice suddenly pointed his stick at H. M. and put the last touch on his accusation.
"Have you forgotten," said Bennett, hearing the words echo back, "that Rainger's foot is as small as a woman's? We noticed it this morning in the library. Have you also forgotten that your uncle John wears the largest size in men's shoes? — Don't you think that you, for instance, could walk back to the house in his tracks, without every touching the outside edges, while two dunderheads were searching the other side of the pavilion? Have you forgotten that, once you were across the lake, the curve of the evergreen avenue would screen you from view? With a number six shoe in a number ten, you could walk straight in your normal way; let yourself back into the house through the door John had left open to come out; and, since there might be some question about a blur in those tracks, you could explain it later exactly in the way Rainger did; to throw the blame on John Bohun."
There was a long pause. Bennett's cigarette had burned crookedly down one side, and he flung it into the fire.
He added thoughtfully:
"I won't call it a conspiracy of the perverse fates, or a choice example of the innate orneriness of human happenings. All I'll say is that in the future I'm going to be very careful when I serve on a jury. Here are two perfectly good and convincing cases, each built out of exactly the same material, each pointing to a different person, and each the only apparent way of explaining an impossible situation. But if in this nightmare of a muddle we get still a third way of explaining it, I'll retire to a padded cell. The case against John collapsed. If the case against Rainger likewise collapses… What do you think?"