"Very strange, sir.' There was nothing left on the hall floor last night, I suppose? No packing cases or anything of that kind, Sir George?"
"There was not," Slight exclaimed. "I can answer for that, nothing whatever."
"Which renders my suspicions all the more certain," the official went on. "The short crisp ashes represented straw, a large bundle of straw dumped down on the floor and set fire to by some person or other. Please look at this."
The speaker stooped down and gathered up a handful of the crisp ashes, smoothing them out on the palm of his hand. At intervals there were yellow shining specks in the grains.
"Will you kindly look closely?" he said. "Amongst the charred mass you can plainly see specks of straw that have escaped the fire. It seems to me an amazing thing that anybody could carry straw into the house like this without being found out. But there it is, and there is an end of it. You are quite sure as to the straw, Sir George?"
"Quite," Dashwood muttered. "Most amazing. We did not go to bed till very late, which makes it all the more remarkable. It must have been practically daylight before the miscreant could have begun to work."
"It certainly is a novelty," the Inspector replied, "but I want to convince you fully that I am right in my conclusion. You will see that parts of the ashes, very minute parts, are plastered together as if they were wet. Also you will see that the floor has been burnt in a kind of channel nearly as far as the door. It is only a narrow channel, but at the same time it is perfectly well defined. Now, what caused the floor to burn in that erratic manner? I am going to tell you. Let us follow that track up as far as the door. There is a large stone with little cracks at the side into which a liquid of some kind has fallen or run rather."
The speaker bent down and rolled a scrap of paper into the moisture which lay shining in the crack of the stone. Then he handed the paper to Sir George.
"Will you kindly smell that, sir," he asked, "and tell me what you make of it?"
"No trouble at all about that," Dashwood exclaimed; "the stuff is paraffin beyond a doubt."