"Mebbe."
"There can't be any doubt about it." And, indeed, only a blind man could have been skeptical as to the wishes of the group near the door.
"I'm goin' through this wood first," announced Farrow firmly. "Mind how you get down. Them marks may be useful. I'm almost sure the scoundrel fired from this very spot."
"Looks like it," agreed Bates, and they descended.
Five minutes later they were in the open park, where their assistant scouts awaited them. None of the others had found any indication of a stranger's presence, and Farrow led them to the house in Indian file, by a path.
"Scotland Yard is on the job," he announced. "Now we'll be told just wot we reelly ought to have done!"
He did not even exchange a furtive glance with Bates, but, for the life of him he could not restrain a note of triumph from creeping into his voice. He noticed, too, that Tomlinson, the butler, not only looked white and shaken, which was natural under the circumstances, but had the haggard aspect of a stout man who may soon become thin by stress of fearsome imaginings.
Farrow did not put it that way.
"Bates is right," he said to himself. "Tomlinson has something on his chest. By jingo, this affair is a one-er an' no mistake!"
At any rate, local talent had no intention of kowtowing too deeply before the majesty of the "Yard," for the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department himself could have achieved no more in the time than Police Constable Farrow.