“Or the private motor—or even the humble push-bike. If you step into a car or get on to a bicycle your trail will stop so far as footsteps are concerned.” Wendover admitted the hit. “What an ass I was not to see that at once. And of course the road was bone-hard and had no dust on it, so he left no track of his tyres?” “None that I could swear to. Now that bicycle settled a good deal. It cleared at once Torrance, Miss Forrest, and most probably Costock as well. I may say at once that I never took Costock seriously. He’s a miserable creature who couldn’t screw himself up to murder if he tried. I had him watched; but I never really suspected him of anything beyond a futile attempt at blackmailing Roger Shandon. He hadn’t even the nerve for that. His pistol was really for self-defence against Shandon, I’m sure, just as he said it was.” Wendover harked back to the problem of the track. “You seem very sure it was a bicycle and not a motor car.” “Isn’t it fairly certain?” Sir Clinton asked. “If the murderer had used a car, he’d have been seen by the lodge-keepers if he left the grounds—at least he’d have run that risk. But a bicycle can be carried off the road by hand and taken through a gap in a hedge quite easily. Since the murderer evidently would not want to be seen, the bicycle is the obvious thing. Call it a bicycle, anyway, for convenience just now. My trouble was that I couldn’t prove which way the bicycle went: whether it went towards the house or towards the East Gate. I left the matter alone for the time, hoping for something else to turn up. Of course, I set my men at work to hunt for any bicycle that had been concealed in the grounds; but they failed to find it.” “Why didn’t you make inquiries about bicycles at Whistlefield?” Wendover demanded. “Because I wanted to keep my thumb on the bicycle question. I didn’t want to get the name of being too clever—so far as the murderer was concerned. It was far better to let him think his method was undetected.” “So at that point,” Stenness put in, “you didn’t know whether the murderer had gone back to the house or had gone outside the grounds?” “No,” Sir Clinton admitted. “I didn’t. The next thing, if you remember, was my visit to the house and my interviews with various people, yourself included. Bear in mind that at that time, I didn’t know whether the murderer was one of the house group or had come in like a bolt from the blue from outside. I had to get that point cleared up as soon as possible; and it offered a good deal of difficulty.