III

Hewitt examined the boots and shoes with great rapidity, but with a

singularly quick eye for peculiarities.

"He liked a light shoe," he said, "and he preferred to wear shoes rather

than boots. There are few boots, and those not much worn, although he

was living in the country. Trod square on the right foot, inward on the

left, and wore the left heel more than the right. It's plain he hated

nails, for these are all hand-sewn, with scarcely as much as a peg

visible in the lot; and they are all laced, boots and shoes alike. Come,

this is the best-worn pair; it is also a pair of the same sort the maid

tells me he must have been wearing, since they are missing; low shoes,

laced; we'll take them with us."

We left the house and sought our friend the coachman. He pointed out

quite clearly the path by which his master had gone on his last walk;

showed us the gate, still fastened, over which he had climbed to gain

the adjoining meadow, and put us in the way of finding the small wood

and the barn.

Both within and without the gate there was a small patch bare of grass,

worn by feet; and here Martin Hewitt picked up his trail at once.

"The ground has hardened since Thursday night," he said; "and so much

the better--it keeps the marks for us. Do you see what is here?"

There were footmarks, certainly, but so beaten and confused that I could

make nothing of them. Hewitt's practised eye, however, read them as I

might have read a rather illegibly written letter.

"Here is the right foot, plain enough," he said, carefully fitting the

shoe he had brought in the mark. "He alighted on that as he came over

the gate. Half over it is another footmark--Bowmore's, I expect, for I

can see signs of others, in both directions--going and coming. But we

shall know better presently."

He rose, and we followed the irregular track across the meadow. Like

most such field-tracks, its direction was plainly indicated by the thin

and beaten grass, with a bare spot here and there. Hewitt troubled to

take no more than a glance at each of these spots as we passed, but that

was all he needed. The meadow was bounded by a hedge, with a stile; and

at the farther side of this stile my friend knelt again, with every

sign of attention.

"A little piece of luck," he reported. "The left shoe has picked up a

tiny piece of broken thorn-twig just here. See the mark? The shoe was a

little soddened in the sole by this time, and the thorn stuck. I hope it

stuck altogether. If it did it may help us wonderfully when we get to

the barn, for the trouble there will be the trampling all round of the

people at the fire."

So we went on till we reached the edge of the little wood. The

field-path skirted this, and here Hewitt dropped on his knees and set to

work with great minuteness.

"Keep away from the track, Brett," he warned me, "or you may make it

worse. The police have been here, I see, and quite recently, coming from

the direction of Redfield. Here are two pairs of unmistakable police

boots and another heavy pair with them; no doubt they brought the

gamekeeper along with them, to have things fully explained."

From the corner of the wood to a point forty yards along the path; back

to the corner again, and then into the wood Hewitt went, carefully

examining every inch of the ground as he did so. Then at last he

rejoined me.

"I think the gamekeeper has told the truth," he said. "It's pretty

plain, thanks to the soft ground hereabout, notwithstanding the

policemen's boots. Here they came together--the thorn-twig sticks to the

shoe still, you see--and here they stopped. The marks face about, and

Bowmore's steps are retraced to the corner of the wood. Peytral's turn

again and go on, and Bowmore's turn into the edge of the wood and come

along among the trees. You don't see them in the grassy parts quite as

well as I do, I expect, but there they are. We'll keep after Peytral's

prints. Bowmore's come back in the same track, I see."

The next stile led to Penn's Meadow. This meadow--a large one--stretched

over a rather steep hump of land, at the other side of which the barn

stood. From the stile two paths could be discerned--one rising straight

over the meadow in the direction of the barn, and the other skirting it

to the left, parallel with the hedge.

"Here the footprints part," Hewitt observed, musingly; "and what does

that mean? Man[oe]uvring--or what?"

He thought a moment, and then went on: "We'll leave the tracks for the

present and see the barn. That is straight ahead, I take it."

When we reached the top of the rise the barn came in view, a blackened

and sinister wreck. The greater part of the main structure was still

standing, and even part of the thatched roof still held its place,

scorched and broken. Off to the right from where we stood the village

roofs were visible, giving indication of the position of the road to

Redfield. A single human figure was in sight--that of a policeman on

guard before the barn.

"Now we must get rid of that excellent fellow," said Hewitt, "or he'll

be offering objections to the examination I want to make. I wonder if he

knows my name?"

We walked down to the barn, and Hewitt, assuming the largest possible

air, addressed the policeman.

"Constable," he said, "I am here officially--here is my card. Of course

you will know the name if you have had any wide experience--London

experience especially. I am looking into this case on behalf of Miss

Peytral--co-operating with the police, of course. Where is your

inspector?"

He was a rather stupid countryman, this policeman, but he was visibly

impressed--even flurried--by Hewitt's elaborate bumptiousness. He

saluted, tried to look unnaturally sagacious, and confessed that he

couldn't exactly say where the inspector was, things being put about so

just now. He might be in Throckham village, but more likely he was at

Redfield.

"Ah!" Hewitt replied, with condescension. "Now, if he is in the village,

you will oblige me, constable, by telling him that I am here. If he is

not there, you will return at once. I will be responsible here till you

come back. Don't be very long, now."

The man was taken by surprise, and possibly a trifle doubtful. But

Hewitt was so extremely lofty and so very peremptory and official, that

the inferior intelligence capitulated feebly, and presently, after

another uneasy salute, the village policeman had vanished in the

direction of the road. The moment he had disappeared Hewitt turned to

the ruined barn. The door was gone, and the scorched and charred lumber

that littered the place had a look of absolute ghostliness--perhaps

chiefly the effect of my imagination in the knowledge of the ghastly

tragedy that the place had witnessed. Well in from the doorway was a

great scatter of light ashes--plainly the pea-straw that the coachman

had spoken of. And by these ashes and partly among them, marked in some

odd manner on the floor, was a horrible black shape that I shuddered to

see, as Hewitt pointed it out with a moving forefinger, which he made to

trace the figure of a prostrate human form.

"Did you never see that before in a burnt house?" Hewitt asked in a

hushed voice. "I have, more than once. That sort of thing always leaves

a strange stain under it, like a shadow."

But business claimed Martin Hewitt, and he stepped carefully within.

Scarcely had he done so, when he stood suddenly still, with a low

whistle, pointing toward something lying among the dirt and ashes by the

foot of that terrible shape.

"See?" he said. "Don't disturb anything, but look!"

I crept in with all the care I could command, and stooped. The place was

filled with such a vast confusion of lumber and cinder and ash that at

first I failed to see at all what had so startled Hewitt's attention.

And even when I understood his direction, all I saw was about a dozen

little wire loops, each a quarter of an inch long or less, lying among a

little grey ash that clung about the ends of some of the loops in clots.

Even as I looked another thing caught Hewitt's eye. Among the

straw-ashes there lay some cinders of paper and card, and near them

another cinder, smaller, and plainly of some other substance. Hewitt

took my walking-stick, and turned this cinder over. It broke apart as he

did so, and from within it two or three little charred sticks escaped.

Hewitt snatched one up and scrutinised it closely.

"Do you see the tin ferrule?" he said. "It has been a brush; and that

was a box of colours!" He pointed to the cinder at his feet. "That being

so," he went on, "that paper and card was probably a sketch-book. Brett!

come outside a bit. There's something amazing here!"

We went outside, and Hewitt faced me with a curious expression that for

the life of me I could not understand.

"Suppose," he said, "_that Mr. Victor Peytral is not dead after all_?"

"Not dead?" I gasped; "but--but he is! We know----"

"It seems to me," Hewitt pursued, with his eyes still fixed on mine,

"that we know very little indeed of this affair, as yet. The body was

unrecognisable, or very near it. You remember what the coachman said?

'If it wasn't for Mr. Peytral's being missing,' he said, 'I doubt if

they'd have known it was him at all.' I think those were his exact

words. More, you must remember that the body has not been seen by either

of Peytral's relatives."

"But then," I protested, "if it isn't his body whose is it?"

"Ah, indeed," Hewitt responded, "whose is it? Don't you see the

possibilities of the thing? There's a colour-box and a sketch-book

burned. Who carried a colour-box and a sketch-book? Not Peytral, or we

should have heard of it from his daughter; she made a particular point

of her father's evening strolls being quite aimless, so far as her

knowledge or conjecture went; she knew nothing of any sketching. And

another thing--don't you see what _those_ things mean?" He pointed

toward the place of the little wire loops.

"Not at all."

"Man, don't you see they've been boot-buttons? When the boots

shrivelled, the threads were burnt and the buttons dropped off.

Boot-buttons are made of a sort of composition that burns to a grey ash,

once the fire really gets hold of them--as you may try yourself, any

time you please. You can see the ash still clinging to some of the

shanks; and there the shanks are, lying in two groups, six and six, as

they fell! Now Peytral came out in laced shoes."

"But if Peytral isn't dead, where is he?"

"Precisely," rejoined Hewitt, with the curious expression still in his

eyes. "As you say, where is he? And as you said before, who is the dead

man? Who is the dead man, and where is Peytral, and why has he gone?

Don't you see the possibilities of the case _now_?"

Light broke upon me suddenly. I saw what Hewitt meant. Here was a

possible explanation of the whole thing--Peytral's recent change of

temper, his evening prowlings, his driving away of Bowmore, and lastly,

of his disappearance--his flight, as it now seemed probable it was. The

case had taken a strange turn, and we looked at one another with meaning

eyes. It might be that Hewitt, begged by the unhappy girl we had but

just left to prove the innocence of her lover, would by that very act

bring her father to the gallows.

"Poor girl!" Hewitt murmured, as we stood staring at one another.

"Better she continued to believe him dead, as she does! Brett, there's

many a good man would be disposed to fling these proofs away for the

girl's sake and her mother's, seeing how little there can be to hurt

Bowmore. But justice must be done, though the blow fall--as it commonly

does--on innocent and guilty together. See, now, I've another idea. Stay

on guard while I try."

He hurried out toward the farther side of the broad band of trampled

ground which surrounded the burnt barn, and began questing to and fro,

this way and that, receding farther from me as he went, and nearing the

horse-pond and the road. At last he vanished altogether, and left me

alone with the burnt barn, my thoughts, and--that dim shape on the barn

floor. It was broad day, but I felt none too happy; and I should not

have been at all anxious to keep the police watch at night.

Perhaps Hewitt had been gone a quarter of an hour, perhaps a little

more, when I saw him again, hurrying back and beckoning to me. I went to

meet him.

"It's right enough," he cried. "I've come on his trail again! There it

is, thorn-mark and all, by the roadside, and at a stile--going to

Redfield--probably to the station. Come, we'll follow it up! Where's

that fool of a policeman? Oh, the muddle they _can_ make when they

really try!"

"Need we wait for him?" I asked.

"Yes, better now, with those proofs lying there; and we must tell him

not to be bounced off again as I bounced him off. There he comes!"

The heavy figure of the local policeman was visible in the distance, and

we shouted and beckoned to hurry him. Agility was no part of that

policeman's nature, however, and beyond a sudden agitation of his head

and his shoulders, which we guessed to be caused by a dignified spasm of

leisurely haste, we saw no apparent acceleration of his pace.

As we stood and waited we were aware of a sound of wheels from the

direction of Redfield, and as the policeman neared us from the right,

so the sound of wheels approached us from the left. Presently a fly hove

in sight--the sort of dusty vehicle that plies at every rural railway

station in this country; and as he caught sight of us in the road the

driver began waving his whip in a very singular and excited manner. As

he drew nearer still he shouted, though at first we could not

distinguish his words. By this time the policeman, trotting ponderously,

was within a few yards. The passenger in the fly, a thin, dark, elderly

man, leaned over the side to look ahead at us, and with that the

policeman pulled up with a great gasp and staggered into the ditch.

"'Ere 'e is!" cried the fly-driver, regardless of the angry

remonstrances of his fare. "'Ere 'e is! 'E's all right! It ain't 'im!

'Ere he is!"

"Shut your mouth, you fool!" cried the angry fare. "_Will_ you stop

making a show of me?"

"Not me!" cried the eccentric cabman. "I don't want no fare, sir! I'm

drivin' you 'ome for honour an' glory, an' honour an' glory I'll make

it! 'Ere 'e is!"

Hewitt took in the case in a flash--the flabbergasted policeman, the

excited cabman and the angry passenger. He sprang into the road and

cried to the cabman, who pulled up suddenly before us.

"Mr. Victor Peytral, I believe?" said Martin Hewitt.

"Yes, sir," answered the dark gentleman snappishly, "but I don't know

you!"

"There has been a deal of trouble here, Mr. Peytral, over your absence

from home, as no doubt you have become aware; and I was telegraphed for

by your daughter. My name is Hewitt--Martin Hewitt."

Peytral's face changed instantly. "I know your name well, Mr. Hewitt,"

he said. "There's a matter--but who is this?"

"My friend, Mr. Brett, who is good enough to help me to-day. If I may

detain you a moment, I should like a word with you aside."

"Certainly."

Mr. Peytral alighted, and the two walked a little apart.

I saw Hewitt talking and pointing toward the burnt barn, and I well

guessed what he was saying. He was giving Peytral warning of what he had

discovered in the barn, explaining that he must give the information to

the police, and asking if, in those circumstances, Peytral wished to go

home, or to make other arrangements. Often Hewitt's duty to his clients

and his duty as a law-upholding citizen between them put him in some

such delicate position.

But there was no hesitation in Mr. Victor Peytral. Plainly he feared

nothing, and he was going home.

"Very well, then," I heard Hewitt say as they turned towards us,

"perhaps we had better go on slowly and let my friend cut across the

fields first to break the news. Brett--I knew you would be useful,

sooner or later."

And so I hurried off, with the happy though delicate mission to restore

both father and lover to Miss Claire Peytral.