"But what could he do? He couldn't take up the time to mess the trail, and he couldn't hurry out and leave his tracks to betray him… You've got him in the pavilion with no tracks outside; but he says he was talking to the butler in his riding-clothes at close on seven o'clock this morning; and I'll swear on the Bible that, when I got to the pavilion this morning, there was only one line of tracks going in."
"Just so. Steady, sir," said Masters. "He did wake the butler up in this house at a quarter to seven. The butler says so."
Rainger savored a triumph. He looked from one to the other.
"Sure, sure, sure. That was his alibi. He remembered the riding-engagement; but didn't it smell very funny to you, eh, that he should have said he got up early in the morning, put on his riding-clothes, and went to wake the butler up before he was certain they would ride that morning?. He tried to be clever. He thought he was clever. Riding boots are useful. They're bigger, a good deal bigger all the way around, than little patent leather dancing-shoes."
Masters whistled. He made a big gesture as Rainger said:
"He waited till it was nearly daylight, and he could see not to bang into anything. I like to think of him sweating beside that dead woman. Then he walked out of your pavilion, and he walked backwards. When he'd changed his clothes and made his alibi, all he had to do was walk back again in his own footprints to `discover' the body. He couldn't have done it if he'd had on the same sized shoes. If he tried to step in the tracks-even in a very thin plaster of snow — he'd only have blurred the prints. If the snow had been deep instead of a little crust, he would have sloughed the tracks up. But he stamped a fresh print with bigger shoes all over the others, and concealed the first outline. The sole-and-heel prints would be messed inside the track, but they always are from the way you walk in snow. No wonder the tracks were fresh. No wonder that stable-hand saw him-from a distance — just going in at the door. He'd literally `covered' his tracks. He'd got himself the swellest alibi a man ever had. But when you got there, young man," said Rainger, choking with the last effort of keeping his words steady, "didn't he seem a little rattled?"
Rainger looked round for a moment more, holding their eyes.
Then he got shakily to his feet. With the effort over, he seemed to shrink like a dough figure; and it was as though a wheel went round behind his eyes. Dizzy and breathing hard, he got the bottle out of his pocket.
"I've told you how it happened,".he said. "Now hang him."
He was fumblingly trying to get the bottle to his lips when he collapsed. He would have fallen if Masters had not caught him.