“Ah!” he exclaimed. “Here is something much more definite.” With the aid of another projection, he scrambled up into the crown of the tree, and, having glanced quickly round, beckoned to us. I stepped up on the projecting lump and, as my eyes rose above the crown, I perceived the brown, shiny impression of a hand on the edge. Climbing into the crown, I was quickly followed by the inspector, and we both stood up by Thorndyke between the three boughs. From where we stood we looked on the upper side of the great limb that swept out across the avenue; and there on its lichen-covered surface, we saw the imprints in reddish-brown of a pair of open hands.
“You notice,” said Thorndyke, leaning out upon the bough, “that he is a short man; I cannot conveniently place my hands so low. You also note that he has both forefingers intact, and so is certainly not Ellis.”
“If you mean to say, sir, that these marks were made by the murderer,” said Fox, “I say it’s impossible. Why, that would mean that he was here looking down at us when we were searching for him with the hounds. The presence of the hounds proves that this man could not have been the murderer.”
“On the contrary,” said Thorndyke, “the presence of this man with bloody hands confirms the other evidence, which all indicates that the hounds were never on the murderer’s trail at all. Come now, inspector, I put it to you: Here is a murdered man; the murderer has almost certainly blood upon his hands; and here is a man with bloody hands, lurking in a tree within a few feet of the corpse and within a few minutes of its discovery (as is shown by the footprints); what are the reasonable probabilities?”
“But you are forgetting the bloodhounds, sir, and the murderer’s knife,” urged the inspector.
“Tut, tut, man!” exclaimed Thorndyke; “those blood hounds are a positive obsession. But I see a sergeant coming up the drive, with the knife, I hope. Perhaps that will solve the riddle for us.”
The sergeant, who carried a small dispatch-box, halted opposite the tree in some surprise while we descended, when he came forward with a military salute and handed the box to the inspector, who forthwith unlocked it, and, opening the lid, displayed an object wrapped in a pocket-handkerchief.
“There is the knife, sir,” said he, “just as I received it. The handkerchief is the sergeant’s.”
Thorndyke unrolled the handkerchief and took from it a large-sized Norwegian knife, which he looked at critically and then handed to me. While I was inspecting the blade, he, shook out the handkerchief and, having looked it over on both sides, turned to the sergeant.
“At what time did you pick up this knife?” he asked.