"You're sure of that?" said he, to Ashton-Kirk.
"Quite positive. And the matter of the little revolver picked up on the lawn: that belonged to Fenton; he probably dropped it in scaling the fence. By means of a strong glass I saw a number scratched on the metal of the butt. I at once knew this to be a pawnbroker's mark. Fuller, inside three hours, had located the pawnbroker, and the records of the place showed the weapon had been sold to Fenton only a little while before."
"Good work!" admired Bat. "Nice!"
"And speaking of Fenton," went on Ashton-Kirk, "it rather puzzled me at first how he had been over the ground about the house and left no trace. But a little attention and look at his feet showed me that I had seen his tracks all over one side of the lawn—the ones of the man walking on his toes—and that I had supposed them to be those of Big Slim before he put on his 'creepers.'"
"Tell me," said Scanlon, "have you ever, in the course of this affair, believed young Frank Burton guilty?"
"At first I did not know. But after my second visit to Duncan Street, and a little talk with the colored maid, who is an honest imaginative soul, I was convinced that he was innocent."
"What did the maid tell you?" asked Bat.
"After the Bounder had been admitted to the house that night, she had gone back to the kitchen to her work. She heard Frank come in, but she did not catch anything of the altercation which followed. A little later, her duties finished, she started for her room which was at the top of the house. As she passed along the hall, on the second floor, she noticed the door of the bath room standing open and remembered she had not supplied it with fresh towels. The linen closet is in a room at the far end of the hall; she went there and procured what she wanted, and as she came into the hall once more she saw young Frank Burton come quickly out of his room, stand at the head of the stairway for a moment as though listening, and then hurry down to the floor below."
"That must have been after he had taken his sister to her room," said Scanlon.
But Ashton-Kirk shook his head.