III
Hewitt examined the boots and shoes with great rapidity, but with asingularly quick eye for peculiarities.
"He liked a light shoe," he said, "and he preferred to wear shoes ratherthan boots. There are few boots, and those not much worn, although hewas living in the country. Trod square on the right foot, inward on theleft, and wore the left heel more than the right. It's plain he hatednails, for these are all hand-sewn, with scarcely as much as a pegvisible 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 maidtells 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 outquite 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 gainthe adjoining meadow, and put us in the way of finding the small woodand 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 muchthe better--it keeps the marks for us. Do you see what is here?"
There were footmarks, certainly, but so beaten and confused that I couldmake nothing of them. Hewitt's practised eye, however, read them as Imight have read a rather illegibly written letter.
"Here is the right foot, plain enough," he said, carefully fitting theshoe he had brought in the mark. "He alighted on that as he came overthe gate. Half over it is another footmark--Bowmore's, I expect, for Ican see signs of others, in both directions--going and coming. But weshall know better presently."
He rose, and we followed the irregular track across the meadow. Likemost such field-tracks, its direction was plainly indicated by the thinand beaten grass, with a bare spot here and there. Hewitt troubled totake no more than a glance at each of these spots as we passed, but thatwas all he needed. The meadow was bounded by a hedge, with a stile; andat the farther side of this stile my friend knelt again, with everysign of attention.
"A little piece of luck," he reported. "The left shoe has picked up atiny piece of broken thorn-twig just here. See the mark? The shoe was alittle soddened in the sole by this time, and the thorn stuck. I hope itstuck altogether. If it did it may help us wonderfully when we get tothe barn, for the trouble there will be the trampling all round of thepeople at the fire."
So we went on till we reached the edge of the little wood. Thefield-path skirted this, and here Hewitt dropped on his knees and set towork with great minuteness.
"Keep away from the track, Brett," he warned me, "or you may make itworse. The police have been here, I see, and quite recently, coming fromthe direction of Redfield. Here are two pairs of unmistakable policeboots and another heavy pair with them; no doubt they brought thegamekeeper along with them, to have things fully explained."
From the corner of the wood to a point forty yards along the path; backto the corner again, and then into the wood Hewitt went, carefullyexamining every inch of the ground as he did so. Then at last herejoined me.
"I think the gamekeeper has told the truth," he said. "It's prettyplain, thanks to the soft ground hereabout, notwithstanding thepolicemen's boots. Here they came together--the thorn-twig sticks to theshoe still, you see--and here they stopped. The marks face about, andBowmore's steps are retraced to the corner of the wood. Peytral's turnagain and go on, and Bowmore's turn into the edge of the wood and comealong among the trees. You don't see them in the grassy parts quite aswell as I do, I expect, but there they are. We'll keep after Peytral'sprints. Bowmore's come back in the same track, I see."
The next stile led to Penn's Meadow. This meadow--a large one--stretchedover a rather steep hump of land, at the other side of which the barnstood. From the stile two paths could be discerned--one rising straightover the meadow in the direction of the barn, and the other skirting itto the left, parallel with the hedge.
"Here the footprints part," Hewitt observed, musingly; "and what doesthat mean? Man[oe]uvring--or what?"
He thought a moment, and then went on: "We'll leave the tracks for thepresent 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 blackenedand sinister wreck. The greater part of the main structure was stillstanding, and even part of the thatched roof still held its place,scorched and broken. Off to the right from where we stood the villageroofs were visible, giving indication of the position of the road toRedfield. A single human figure was in sight--that of a policeman onguard before the barn.
"Now we must get rid of that excellent fellow," said Hewitt, "or he'llbe offering objections to the examination I want to make. I wonder if heknows my name?"
We walked down to the barn, and Hewitt, assuming the largest possibleair, addressed the policeman.
"Constable," he said, "I am here officially--here is my card. Of courseyou will know the name if you have had any wide experience--Londonexperience especially. I am looking into this case on behalf of MissPeytral--co-operating with the police, of course. Where is yourinspector?"
He was a rather stupid countryman, this policeman, but he was visiblyimpressed--even flurried--by Hewitt's elaborate bumptiousness. Hesaluted, tried to look unnaturally sagacious, and confessed that hecouldn't exactly say where the inspector was, things being put about sojust now. He might be in Throckham village, but more likely he was atRedfield.
"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 isnot there, you will return at once. I will be responsible here till youcome back. Don't be very long, now."
The man was taken by surprise, and possibly a trifle doubtful. ButHewitt was so extremely lofty and so very peremptory and official, thatthe inferior intelligence capitulated feebly, and presently, afteranother uneasy salute, the village policeman had vanished in thedirection of the road. The moment he had disappeared Hewitt turned tothe ruined barn. The door was gone, and the scorched and charred lumberthat littered the place had a look of absolute ghostliness--perhapschiefly the effect of my imagination in the knowledge of the ghastlytragedy that the place had witnessed. Well in from the doorway was agreat scatter of light ashes--plainly the pea-straw that the coachmanhad spoken of. And by these ashes and partly among them, marked in someodd manner on the floor, was a horrible black shape that I shuddered tosee, as Hewitt pointed it out with a moving forefinger, which he made totrace the figure of a prostrate human form.
"Did you never see that before in a burnt house?" Hewitt asked in ahushed voice. "I have, more than once. That sort of thing always leavesa 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 lowwhistle, pointing toward something lying among the dirt and ashes by thefoot 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 wasfilled with such a vast confusion of lumber and cinder and ash that atfirst 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 dozenlittle wire loops, each a quarter of an inch long or less, lying among alittle 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 thestraw-ashes there lay some cinders of paper and card, and near themanother cinder, smaller, and plainly of some other substance. Hewitttook my walking-stick, and turned this cinder over. It broke apart as hedid 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 thatwas a box of colours!" He pointed to the cinder at his feet. "That beingso," he went on, "that paper and card was probably a sketch-book. Brett!com
e outside a bit. There's something amazing here!"
We went outside, and Hewitt faced me with a curious expression that forthe 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 wasunrecognisable, or very near it. You remember what the coachman said?'If it wasn't for Mr. Peytral's being missing,' he said, 'I doubt ifthey'd have known it was him at all.' I think those were his exactwords. More, you must remember that the body has not been seen by eitherof 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 thepossibilities of the thing? There's a colour-box and a sketch-bookburned. Who carried a colour-box and a sketch-book? Not Peytral, or weshould have heard of it from his daughter; she made a particular pointof her father's evening strolls being quite aimless, so far as herknowledge or conjecture went; she knew nothing of any sketching. Andanother thing--don't you see what _those_ things mean?" He pointedtoward the place of the little wire loops.
"Not at all."
"Man, don't you see they've been boot-buttons? When the bootsshrivelled, 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, anytime you please. You can see the ash still clinging to some of theshanks; and there the shanks are, lying in two groups, six and six, asthey 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 hiseyes. "As you say, where is he? And as you said before, who is the deadman? 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 apossible explanation of the whole thing--Peytral's recent change oftemper, his evening prowlings, his driving away of Bowmore, and lastly,of his disappearance--his flight, as it now seemed probable it was. Thecase had taken a strange turn, and we looked at one another with meaningeyes. It might be that Hewitt, begged by the unhappy girl we had butjust left to prove the innocence of her lover, would by that very actbring 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'smany a good man would be disposed to fling these proofs away for thegirl's sake and her mother's, seeing how little there can be to hurtBowmore. But justice must be done, though the blow fall--as it commonlydoes--on innocent and guilty together. See, now, I've another idea. Stayon guard while I try."
He hurried out toward the farther side of the broad band of trampledground which surrounded the burnt barn, and began questing to and fro,this way and that, receding farther from me as he went, and nearing thehorse-pond and the road. At last he vanished altogether, and left mealone with the burnt barn, my thoughts, and--that dim shape on the barnfloor. It was broad day, but I felt none too happy; and I should nothave been at all anxious to keep the police watch at night.
Perhaps Hewitt had been gone a quarter of an hour, perhaps a littlemore, when I saw him again, hurrying back and beckoning to me. I went tomeet him.
"It's right enough," he cried. "I've come on his trail again! There itis, thorn-mark and all, by the roadside, and at a stile--going toRedfield--probably to the station. Come, we'll follow it up! Where'sthat fool of a policeman? Oh, the muddle they _can_ make when theyreally try!"
"Need we wait for him?" I asked.
"Yes, better now, with those proofs lying there; and we must tell himnot 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, andwe shouted and beckoned to hurry him. Agility was no part of thatpoliceman's nature, however, and beyond a sudden agitation of his headand his shoulders, which we guessed to be caused by a dignified spasm ofleisurely haste, we saw no apparent acceleration of his pace.
As we stood and waited we were aware of a sound of wheels from thedirection of Redfield, and as the policeman neared us from the right,so the sound of wheels approached us from the left. Presently a fly hovein sight--the sort of dusty vehicle that plies at every rural railwaystation in this country; and as he caught sight of us in the road thedriver began waving his whip in a very singular and excited manner. Ashe drew nearer still he shouted, though at first we could notdistinguish his words. By this time the policeman, trotting ponderously,was within a few yards. The passenger in the fly, a thin, dark, elderlyman, leaned over the side to look ahead at us, and with that thepoliceman pulled up with a great gasp and staggered into the ditch.
"'Ere 'e is!" cried the fly-driver, regardless of the angryremonstrances 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 stopmaking a show of me?"
"Not me!" cried the eccentric cabman. "I don't want no fare, sir! I'mdrivin' you 'ome for honour an' glory, an' honour an' glory I'll makeit! 'Ere 'e is!"
Hewitt took in the case in a flash--the flabbergasted policeman, theexcited cabman and the angry passenger. He sprang into the road andcried 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 knowyou!"
"There has been a deal of trouble here, Mr. Peytral, over your absencefrom home, as no doubt you have become aware; and I was telegraphed forby 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 maydetain 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 wellguessed what he was saying. He was giving Peytral warning of what he haddiscovered in the barn, explaining that he must give the information tothe police, and asking if, in those circumstances, Peytral wished to gohome, or to make other arrangements. Often Hewitt's duty to his clientsand his duty as a law-upholding citizen between them put him in somesuch delicate position.
But there was no hesitation in Mr. Victor Peytral. Plainly he fearednothing, 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 thefields 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 restoreboth father and lover to Miss Claire Peytral.