The police noticed right off that it didn't have the damp, musty feel of a place shut up through a long spell of rain. The air was cold and dry and they could scent the odor of wood fires and a slight faint smell of cigar smoke. Then they saw that the fireplace was piled high with ashes and that several cigarette ends were scattered on the hearth. On the center table was a shaded lamp and near it a match box with burnt matches strewn round on the floor. The desk drawer was open and the papers inside all tossed and littered about as if someone had gone through them in a hurry. Two armchairs stood on either side of the table and another was in front of the fireplace. All over the floor were earth stains as if muddy feet had been walking about. There were no signs that the place had been broken into—windows and doors were locked and the locks in good condition.
Outside against the wall of the house they found a pile of broken china, what seemed to be the remains of a tea set. It was not till the search was nearly ended that one of the men, studying the grass along the roadside for traces of footprints, came on a gasoline drum hidden among the bushes.
But that wasn't the worst—leading up the road to within a few yards of the wharf were the tracks of auto wheels. At the time when these tracks were made the road was deep in mud which, about the wharf, had evidently been a regular pool. The driver of the motor had stopped his car at the edge of this, got out and walked through it to the bungalow. Clear as if they had been cast in plaster his footprints went from where the ruts ended to the edge of the wharf. There, just at the corner of the planks, three small, pointed footprints met them—a woman's. Either the man had carried the woman or she had picked her way along the grass by the roadside, and joining him on the planks had made a step or two into the soft earth. On the wharf the prints were lost in a broken caking of mud. The man's went back to the car, close to where they had come from it, and they returned as they had come—alone.
Jack Reddy's shoes fitted the large prints and Sylvia Hesketh's the small ones!
It came on Longwood with an awful shock. The faces of the people were all dull and dazed looking, as if they were knocked half silly by a blow. They couldn't believe it—and yet there it was! The papers printed terrible headlines—"The Earth gives up a Murderer's Secret"—and "Jack Frost versus Jack Reddy." There were imaginary accounts of how Mr. Reddy could have done it, and Jasper, in his paper, had a long article worked out like the story he'd told us that night in the Gilt Edge, but with all the holes filled up. Everything was against Mr. Reddy, even the telephone message that Sylvia had sent him from the Wayside Arbor couldn't be traced. The Corona operator could remember nothing about it and there was no record—only Jack Reddy's word and nobody believed it.
They had him up before the District Attorney and his examination was published in the papers. I can't put it all down—it's not necessary—but it was bad. After I read it I sat still in my room, feeling seasick and my face in the glass frightened me.
When they asked him if he had been at the bungalow that night he said he had, he had gone there after he had given up his hunt for Sylvia.
"Why didn't you say this at the inquest?" was asked.
He answered "that he hadn't thought it was necessary—that——" then he stopped as if he wasn't sure and after a moment or two said: "I didn't see that it threw any light on the murder, as I was alone."
"You wished to conceal the fact that you were there, then?"