“You heard that extraordinary yarn he spun us just now, about the Black Sailor and his bicycle. If the tracks showed anywhere, it would be on that path. Now here, all round this place, you can see the Professor’s footmarks. He was here all right last night, as he says. But it’s odd we can’t find traces of the other fellow. You don’t think he can have dreamt it, do you?”
“It would be most unlike him,” replied Harold. “Why should he imagine such a thing, anyhow?”
“Well, you see, if this jury business is correct, he is the only survivor. You remember his telling us the other day in town that there would be one more murder? He meant that his own life was threatened, and I expect it’s been preying on his mind. It’s the only way I can account for this business.”
Harold shook his head. “It is true that he hasn’t been quite himself lately,” he replied. “But I don’t think he’s got to the stage of seeing things. Anyhow, how do you account for the counter he gave you just now?”
“How do you account for anything in this blessed case?” retorted Hanslet. “I believe the devil’s at the bottom of it, if you ask me. I wish you would follow up that path in the opposite direction for a bit, while I poke about here. If you find the marks of a bicycle wheel, don’t touch ’em, but come back and tell me.”
Harold followed the path for half a mile or so in the direction of the Studland road, and returned shaking his head. Hanslet had by this time finished his inspection of the ruins. He turned to the Professor, who had joined him. “Well, there’s nothing very definite to be seen here,” he said, with his usual cheerful smile. “What do you suggest we do next, Professor?”
“Return to the inn for dinner,” replied Dr. Priestley. “To-morrow, if you agree, I propose to return to London by an early train.”
“I think that will certainly be the best course,” agreed Hanslet. “I will just run round to the local police station after dinner, and have a chat with whoever’s in charge. We must certainly follow up this valuable clue of yours.”
They returned to the inn, and after dinner Hanslet went round to the police station. The superintendent who had been in charge at the time of Morlandson’s death had since been promoted and had left the district, but Hanslet had no difficulty in verifying the story as told by the landlord. He had disclosed his identity, and explained that he had come down in connection with a case in which he was interested, without however mentioning the Praed Street murders. In the course of conversation with the sergeant in charge he elicited the information that no strangers had recently been heard of in the district, and certainly nobody in any way resembling the Black Sailor.
“There’s a few foreigners and the like comes in to Poole, sir,” the sergeant had explained. “But they never comes over this way. The barges what goes up to Goathorn are all local craft, and there’s never a stranger among them. If any stranger was wandering about the heath, we’d get to hear of it, sharp enough. Why, it’s an event in the lives of these clay-workers if they see a strange face.”