“Pull that nail keg over here, will you, Tommy?” said Brent. “Put it under my feet—fine.” He resettled himself comfortably.
“That part was a dream and we’ll forget it,” said Tom.
“If you had seen it you wouldn’t forget it,” said I.
“But the footprint under the suitcase is real,” said Brent. “Anyway, the suitcase is real; it’s a cheap one, but it’s real.”
“Well, what do you think about it?” I asked, a trifle annoyed. “You sit there talking as if we were discussing the weather. What are we going to do about it? A stranger was in this lodge, that’s absolutely certain.”
“You want me to deduce conclusions?” Brent drawled. “Well then, if nobody entered by the windows, and if the door wasn’t tampered with, there are two theories left. Either your midnight visitor was in the lodge before you retired, or else he had a key to the door. Personally, I prefer the key theory.”
The thought of there being some one in the lodge with me all through that tempestuous evening, somewhat startled me. “I don’t think so,” I said thoughtfully. “There was no one in either of the other rooms when I went to mine.”
“All right then,” said Tom, jumping into the discussion in his impulsive way; “here’s what we’re face to face with. Here’s a footprint in this hearth. There’s another like it up the mountain. There’s some vestige of a trail—if our dreamer didn’t dream that too. Some one entered this lodge with a key, left a footprint upstairs, and went away again taking the folded up newspaper article about Mr. McClintick’s death with him. Now what about it?”
“You forgot the word scratched on the rock up the mountain,” Brent drawled.
“And that too,” said Tom.