"Find any footprints?"
"No, sir. Ground's baked hard, you know. I'll show you."
He led the Inspector to the lawn that ran down to the stream, but instead of going to the bridge, he plunged into the thicket at a point where a clump of azaleas jutted out beyond the dark mass of rhododendrons. Worming his way between the bushes, and holding back stray branches so that his superior's face should not be scratched by them, he conducted him to a place in the centre of the shrubbery where the bushes grew less thickly. "This is where I found the rifle," he said. "Now, you take a look, sir! Beautiful, easy shot, wouldn't it be?"
The Inspector dropped on to his knee, and found that he was looking down at the bridge some twenty yards away, and clearly visible between an azalea and a towering rhododendron. "Yes," he said slowly. "Easy enough. He must have stayed quiet, though, till Mr. White, and the other two, had run down to the bridge, or they'd have heard him."
"That's all right," replied the Sergeant. "Plenty of time for him to make his getaway while they was on the bridge. I reckon this is the way he went." He pushed on through the thicket, demonstrating to his chief, as he went, why the unknown murderer must, in his opinion, have struck up towards the carriage-drive, which was at the side of the house. "The stream bends right round, as you know, sir. There's a bit of a pool on the other side of that bank, so it stands to reason he didn't go that way. No, the way I look at it is, he fired his shot, waited till the, people by the house had run down to the bridge, dropped the rifle, and slunk off the way he came, either taking a chance of being seen from the house, and coming out on the drive just by the gate, or, more likely, climbing over the wall and walking off down the road. Anyone could get over that wall, as you'll see for yourself in a minute, sir."
"Hold on a moment! I'll take a look at the lie of the land," said the Inspector, surmounting the slight, sandy bank which the Sergeant had pointed out to him.
The stream, taking a bend to the south, widened, below the bank, into a pool, narrowed again, and meandered on until it ran under a bridge in the highway not far from one of the drive-gates. The Inspector gazed at the pool in ruminative silence until the Sergeant, unable to discover what was holding his interest, ventured to ask him.
"I was thinking," said the Inspector, "that no one could jump over that pool."
"Well, they wouldn't want to, would they?" said the Sergeant, a little impatiently. "The getaway must have been the way I told you, sir. Stands to reason!"
"Nor," said the Inspector, "could they jump the stream above it without being seen by anyone standing on the bridge between the two houses."