“My idea exactly. Say, you’re tolerably clever yourself! Well, I’ll gamble I can name who did it.”
“I hope so. If you can, it will be one feather in your cap.”
“I’ll have many in it afore this case is ended. Come down this way, and I’ll show you something more. But this is between us, mind you!”
“If you doubt me, keep it to yourself.”
“Oh, no; I’ll trust you! I can read a man’s face, and don’t you forget it.”
At the heels of the burly constable, who was that common type of man whose eagerness to serve himself makes him the cat’s-paw of his superiors, Sheridan Keene followed through the dim hall and down a back stairway, and entered a basement laundry. From the single window a part of one pane was missing, making the room easy of access from without; and upon the plank floor, extending from the window toward the entry door, were several marks of muddy boots.
“D’ye see that, and them?” triumphantly demanded Mr. Bragg, pointing first to the window and then the floor. “It came cold late last night, and the ground was soft in the early evening. The sawbones says Moore was killed before midnight. The party who entered that window, and stole out here and upstairs, was the party who searched the desk and most likely did the rest of the job. It was done in the evening.”
“By Jove! I believe you’ve struck the trail, constable!” said Keene admiringly.
“I know I’ve struck it!” declared Mr. Bragg, with a twitch of his bushy beard. “Now come outside here!”
He led the way through the entry and out of a narrow back door, and thence around to one side of the house. The soil of a flower bed under the windows of Moore’s chamber was then frozen hard. But in several places among the dead plants and vines were the clearly defined footprints of a man’s heavy boots; deeper here and there, as if he had at times stood on tiptoe to reach the height of the window and peer into the room.