"Very remarkable—very," I declared. "Probably Frayne, when he takes the finger-prints, will find some clue," I added, laughing inwardly, for I knew that those who had committed that robbery were far too clever to leave behind any traces of their identity. Besides, to actually lower the booty down into a public street showed a daring spirit which one only finds in the most expert criminals.
I could not, however, account for the discovery of that little shoe. Had it really been lost—or had it been placed there in order to mystify and mislead the police?
The latter suggestion had, of course, never entered Treeton's head.
"I wonder," I said to him, "if you would allow me to take this shoe along to the hotel? I want to take the exact measurements."
"Certainly, Mr. Vidal," was his reply. "You'll send it round to me, at the station, afterwards?"
"In an hour you shall have it," I promised him. Then I placed the shoe in my pocket, and made a tour of the room, touching nothing because of Frayne's coming hunt for finger-prints.
Jeanjean always wore gloves, skin-thin, rubber-gloves, which left no trace of his light touch. The curved lines of his thumb and forefinger were far too well known in Paris, in London, in Berlin and Rome, where the bureaux of detective police all possessed enlarged photographs of them.
Back in my room at the Hôtel de Paris, I took from a drawer the plaster cast of the woman's footprints I had found near the spot where Craig had been found.
Then, carrying it down to the shore near the pier, I made a print with the cast in the wet sand left hard by the receding tide.
Afterwards, I took the tiny, patent leather shoe from my pocket, and placed it carefully in the print.