"Ha!" said Mr. Egerton. "And what did you make out there? I saw nothing but a pool of blood flowing from the dead body."
"I beg your worship's pardon," answered the officer; "but you are mistaken there. As far as I could make out, it must have been done by two men--I don't mean to say, mind that there were not three; but if there were, the other never stepped in the blood; but two there were certainly, for I got the tread of one very near whole--that is to say the round of his boot heel and more than three inches of the toe from the tip, backward--so that one of them had a remarkably long foot. There is the measure and shape of it, as far as I could get it--more than twelve inches, you see, sir."
"And the other!" said Dr. Wilton--"the other man's foot--what was the length of it?"
"Ah, sir, that I could not get at!" replied the officer. "There was nothing but about five inches of the fore-part of the sole; but that I got twice; and it is as different a foot, you see, from the other as one would wish to find--twice as broad, and square toed. And then I got the mark of a hand, too, which must have been at the poor old devil's throat when they were cutting it, for it was all blood. It had rested on the cornice of the dado; and the fellow, whoever he was, wanted part of the third finger of his left hand."
"Ha, that is a good fact!" said Dr. Wilton, eagerly; "but how did you make that out Cousins?"
"Why, sir, because it marked all the way up, but left off suddenly before it got to the end," answered the officer.
"But might not that finger have been bent?" said Mr. Egerton.
"Not unless it bent in the middle of the second joint," replied Cousins; "but the matter was quite clear, sir; and one has nothing to do but look at it to satisfy oneself that a part of the finger was wanting; and what is oddest of all, that it has not been taken off at the joint. All I saw besides was, that the fellow who cut the old man's throat must have gone away with his pantaloons very bloody; for he did it kneeling, and there is just a clear spot where his knee and part of his leg kept the blood from going over the floor."
"Indeed, that may serve some purpose, too!" said Dr. Wilton; "but did you find no more steps or marks of any other person?"
"Oh, plenty of steps, sir!" replied the officer. "There were all the dirty feet of the coroner's inquest. But I think--though I'm not quite so sure of that--that there must have been somebody left below to keep watch, while the others went up to do the job. You see, sir, there is in one place of the passage floor a fresh deal, and I can trace upon that deal the marks of a shoe with large nails in it, going backward and forward the matter of twenty times. Now, I hear that the deal was put in not a week ago, and all the folks here agree, that the old man never let a person with nails in his shoes twenty times into his house in all his life; so it looks like as if that were the only time and way in which it could get so often marked."