“It's a clear impression. A man's shoe with a pointed toe, it seems to be,” he announced. “Of course, if he was creeping along behind the groyne we can't get his ordinary length of step, so we haven't any notion of his height.”
Sir Clinton had moved on to the end of the trail.
“He evidently crouched down here for quite a while,” he pointed out. “See the depth of these impressions and the number of times he must have shifted the position of his feet to ease his muscles. Then he turned back again and went back to the road, still crouching.”
He swung slowly round, looking about him. The beach was empty. Farther along it, towards the hotel, a group of bathing-boxes had been erected for the use of hotel visitors. Less than ten yards from the turning-point of the footprints, on the other side of the groyne, Neptune's Seat jutted up from the surrounding sand. It was, as the inspector had said, like a huge stone settee standing with its back to the land; and on the flat part of it lay the body of a man. Sir Clinton bent down and scrutinised the surface of the sand around the turning-point of the track for some minutes, but he made no comment as he completed his survey. When he rose to his full height again, he saw on the road the figure of the fisherman, Wark; and he made a gesture forbidding the man to come down on the sand.
“Just go up and see if he's got the candles and the blow-lamp, inspector, please. We may as well finish off here if he has.”
Armadale soon returned with the articles.
“Good fellow, that,” Sir Clinton commented. “He hasn't wasted time!”
He turned and gazed across at the advancing tide.
“We'll have to hurry up. Time's getting short. Another half-hour and the water will be up near that rock. We'll need to take the seaward tracks first of all. Hold the blow-lamp, will you, inspector, while I get a candle out.”
Wendover's face showed that even yet he had not grasped the chief constable's object. Sir Clinton extracted a candle and lit the blow-lamp.