“I'd read it this way. While they were standing there, with their backs to the wreck, No. 3 started into activity. He came out from the cover of the hull and walked up to where they were standing. He must have gone quietly, for they don't seem to have turned to meet him. You see that, squire? Do you see anything else?” Wendover was staring at the tracks with a puzzled look on his face. The inspector, who had just reached this point in his diagram, gave a smothered exclamation of surprise as he examined the sand below him. Wendover was the first to find his voice. “Where's the rest of Fordingbridge's track?” he demanded. “It simply stops short there. He didn't turn; he didn't walk away; and—damn it, he can't have flown away. Where did he go to?” Sir Clinton ignored the interruption. “Let's take the tracks as we find them. After No. 3 came up behind the others, it's clear enough that No. 2 and No. 3 went off side by side, down towards the sea. Even from here you can see that they were in company, for sometimes the tracks cross, and No. 2 has his prints on top of No. 3, whereas farther on you see No. 3 putting his feet on top of No. 2's impression. Have you finished with that jotting of yours, inspector? Then we'll go and follow these tracks down the beach to the tide edge.” He dropped neatly down from the wreck as he spoke, and waited for the others to rejoin him. “Both No. 2 and No. 3 must have been wearing crêpe-rubber shoes or something of that sort,” the inspector remarked, stooping over the tracks. “And they've both got fairly big feet, it seems.” “No. 3 seems to have been walking on his toes,” Wendover pointed out. “He seems to have dug deeper with them than with his heels. And his feet are fairly parallel instead of having the toes pointing outwards. That's how the Red Indians walk,” he added informatively. Sir Clinton seemed more interested in the general direction of the tracks. Keeping to one side of them, he moved along the trail, scanning the prints as he went. Armadale, moving rather more rapidly on the other side of the route, came abruptly to a halt as he reached the edge of the waves. The rest of the trail had been obliterated by the rising tide. “H'm! Blank end!” he said disgustedly. Sir Clinton looked up. “Just as well for you, inspector, perhaps. If you'd hurried along at that rate at low tide you'd have run straight into the patch of quicksand, if I'm not mistaken. It's just down yonder.” “What do you make of it, sir?”