“Let's take the tracks as we find them. After No. 3 came up behind the others, it's clear enough that No. 2 and No. 3 went off side by side, down towards the sea. Even from here you can see that they were in company, for sometimes the tracks cross, and No. 2 has his prints on top of No. 3, whereas farther on you see No. 3 putting his feet on top of No. 2's impression. Have you finished with that jotting of yours, inspector? Then we'll go and follow these tracks down the beach to the tide edge.”
He dropped neatly down from the wreck as he spoke, and waited for the others to rejoin him.
“Both No. 2 and No. 3 must have been wearing crêpe-rubber shoes or something of that sort,” the inspector remarked, stooping over the tracks. “And they've both got fairly big feet, it seems.”
“No. 3 seems to have been walking on his toes,” Wendover pointed out. “He seems to have dug deeper with them than with his heels. And his feet are fairly parallel instead of having the toes pointing outwards. That's how the Red Indians walk,” he added informatively.
Sir Clinton seemed more interested in the general direction of the tracks. Keeping to one side of them, he moved along the trail, scanning the prints as he went. Armadale, moving rather more rapidly on the other side of the route, came abruptly to a halt as he reached the edge of the waves. The rest of the trail had been obliterated by the rising tide.
“H'm! Blank end!” he said disgustedly.
Sir Clinton looked up.
“Just as well for you, inspector, perhaps. If you'd hurried along at that rate at low tide you'd have run straight into the patch of quicksand, if I'm not mistaken. It's just down yonder.”
“What do you make of it, sir?”
“One might make a lot of it, if one started to consider the possibilities. They may have walked off along the beach on the part that's now swamped by the tide. Or they may have got into a boat and gone home that way. All one really knows is that they got off the premises without leaving tracks. We might, of course, hunt along the water-line and try to spot where they came up on to high-and-dry ground; but I think they're fairly ingenious, and most likely they took the trouble to walk on shingle above the tide-mark if they came ashore. It's not worth wasting time on, since we've little enough already. Let's get back to the meeting-point.”