"Now see. He had bad news for her. Marcia didn't take any bad news well; and not the smash-up of everything she wanted to do. But you don't know Bohun's character if you think he told her straight out. He's too weak. He put it off, and first told her everything was all right. There was love-making; the fool thought he could get Marcia into the right state of mind with that. Kuaa! Afterwards he admitted things. And she told him for the first time how she really felt towards him."
Rainger's voice rose. "He smashed her head in about an hour and a half after he'd got to the pavilion. Then the fool found that the snow had stopped long ago. His footprints going out there had been effaced. There wasn't a mark on the snow now, and if he left that place he would leave his own footprints to hang him. Well? What did he do? What did even a nervous fool do?"
Rainger must have seen that he had caught his audience. For a moment Bennett thought the man had grown cold sober; that he had forced himself sober by very violence of will; and, but for the twitching of the fingers and uncertain movements of the head, Bennett would have believed it.
"Use your brains," said Rainger, with that queer diabolical grin. "What was the only thing that would save him?"
Masters studied him. "If I had been in his place (oh, ah! supposing this to be true!), there was an easy way."
"Think so? What would you have done?"
"Rummy games we're playing! Eh? Well, then, I should have left that pavilion, messing up my own trail thoroughly by shuffling and kicking and scraping over the tracks so that nobody'd know whose they were. I'd have carried that messed-up trail up over the lawn to the high-road, or anywhere you like. The house, even. Time? Oh, ah; I'll admit it would have taken some time, and in the dark, but there'd be all the time until daylight."
Rainger blew out a blast of sour smoke. "Any fool," he said, "would have remembered the dog." Masters stopped.
"The dog, my flatfoot-friend, that barked like hell and for such a long time-while Bohun was only hurrying down to the pavilion before — that the old man had it locked up. Think that over, will you? Mr. John remembered that dog; it almost gave him away before. What did he think it would be during the fifteen or twenty minutes it would take him to mess up all his tracks? How was he to know it was locked up? What happens in a house when a dog keeps on steadily barking at four o'clock in the morning. They'd wake up. They'd look out. And there was Bohun in the middle of the lawn, caught."
Bennett went over and sat down on the divan. His wits were whirling, but he knew the man was right. Bennett said: