Hellier was not in sight. The detective waited for a moment or two to make sure, and then approached No. 18.
He entered the gate, closed it behind him, and made for the back garden.
Here he stood for a moment, looking about him with eager eyes. Then he began searching about on the ground attentively, as a person searches who has dropped a coin.
There was a fairish sized grass plot, on which the grass was rank and long. A gravelled walk lay round it, and a flowerless flower bed between the walk and the garden wall.
There was no sign of a bootmark anywhere, though the ground was soft and there had been no frost on the previous night.
The gravel was disturbed on the walk leading to the verandah, but that was nothing.
In that portion of the garden where digging was possible there was no sign. Yet the hoe had been used quite recently, and a sure instinct told him that it had not been used in the front garden, where observation was possible, but here, in this place that was overlooked by nothing but blind walls and the back windows of an empty house.
Suddenly his eye was struck by an object upon the flower bed by the rear wall.
A half-withered cabbage leaf. There were withered leaves and to spare in the garden, but this was the only cabbage leaf. Nothing looked more natural or in keeping with the general untidiness of the place. A thousand men hunting for traces would have disregarded it.
Freyberger walked towards it and picked it up.