"There were footsteps then?"
"Footsteps? Great Scott, yes, heaps of them: the absolute continuation of those which led me and my men to this house. But the madness of the thing, the puzzle of the thing! No man on earth can run away in two directions, yet there the blessed things are, going down the road at full tilt and coming back up it again still on a dead run. Two lines of them, old chap, one going and the other returning and both passing by the gate of this house. By it, do you hear?—by it, and never once turning in; yet in the garden we have found marks that correspond with them to the fraction of a hair, and we know positively that the fellow did come in here. It licks me, Cleek—it positively licks me. It's beyond all reason."
"Yes," admitted Cleek, thinking of the green satin dress. "It is, Mr. Narkom, it certainly is."
"Dollops will bring the drawings he's making to you as soon as he has covered all the ground," resumed the superintendent almost immediately. "Clever young dog that and no mistake. But to return to our muttons, old chap. Did you get anything out of this poor fellow? Any clue to the party who assaulted him?"
"None. He doesn't know. For one thing, the mist prevented him seeing his assailant, and for another, he was first shot down by some one who was running toward him and answered his challenge with a bullet, and then pounced upon by somebody else who was behind him and floored him with the hammer. I take it that the person who was running and who fired the shot was advancing toward him from this direction—was, in fact, the actual assassin—and that having discharged the pistol and caused this poor fellow to whistle a call for assistance to the constable in Mulberry Lane, he was put to it to get out of the box in which he found himself by those two things. To escape across the Common meant to be pursued by the constable and driven across the track of one of the other keepers; so he took the bold hazard of putting on this poor chap's coat, cap, and badge and playing at joining in the hue and cry in the manner he did. Is that"—turning to the dying man—"the truth of it?"
The keeper could only nod—he was now too far gone to make any verbal response, and even the administering of another dose of brandy failed to whip up his expiring strength.
"I'm afraid we shall never get any more out of him, poor fellow," said Cleek feelingly. "He is lapsing into unconsciousness, you see. Raise him a bit, make him a little more comfortable if pos—— Quick! Catch his head, Mr. Narkom! Don't let it strike the boards. Gone!—a good true servant of the public gone! And the blackguard that killed him still at large!"
Then he gently folded the useless hands and closed down the sightless eyes, and shaking out the coat which Petrie had bundled into a pillow, spread it over the dead man and was very, very still for a little time.
"There's a widow—and some little nippers, Mr. Narkom," he said when he at length rose to his feet. "Find them out for me, will you? And if you can see your way to offer a good substantial reward for the clearing up of this case and the capture of the criminal, I'll pull it off and you may pay that reward to the mother of this man's children."
"Cleek, my dear fellow! How ridiculously quixotic. What on earth can you be thinking about?"