“One might make a lot of it, if one started to consider the possibilities. They may have walked off along the beach on the part that's now swamped by the tide. Or they may have got into a boat and gone home that way. All one really knows is that they got off the premises without leaving tracks. We might, of course, hunt along the water-line and try to spot where they came up on to high-and-dry ground; but I think they're fairly ingenious, and most likely they took the trouble to walk on shingle above the tide-mark if they came ashore. It's not worth wasting time on, since we've little enough already. Let's get back to the meeting-point.” He led the way up the beach again. “Reminds one a bit of Sam Lloyd's ‘Get off the Earth’ puzzle, doesn't it?” he suggested, when they came back to the point where the three tracks met. “You can count your three men all right, and then—flick!—there are only two. How do you account for it, squire?” Wendover scrutinised the tracks minutely. “There's been no struggle, anyhow,” he affirmed. “The final tracks of Fordingbridge are quite clear enough to show that. So he must have gone voluntarily, wherever he went to.” “And you explain his going—how?” Wendover reflected for a moment or two before answering. “Let's take every possibility into account,” he said, as his eyes ranged over the sand. “First of all, he didn't sink into the sand in any normal way, for the surface isn't disturbed. Secondly, he didn't walk away, or he'd have left tracks. That leaves only the possibility that he went off through the air.” “I like this pseudo-mathematical kind of reasoning, squire. It sounds so convincing,” Sir Clinton commented. “Go ahead. You never fail to combine interest with charm in your expositions.” Wendover seemed untouched by the warmth of this tribute. “If he went off through the air, he must have managed it either by himself or with the help of the other two; that's self-evident. Now it's too far for him to have jumped backwards on to the wreck and climbed up it; we can rule that out. And it's hardly likely that he was enough of a D. D. Home to manage a feat of levitation and sail up into the air off his own bat. So that excludes the notion that he vanished completely, without any extraneous assistance, doesn't it?” “ ‘He who has truth at his heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue’—Ruskin,” quoted Sir Clinton, with the air of reading from a collection of moral maxims. “You've made the thing crystal-clear to me, squire, with the exception of just one or two trifling points. And these are: First, why did that very solid and unimaginative Mr. Paul Fordingbridge take to romping with his—presumably—grown-up pals? Second, why didn't he return home after these little games? Third, where is he now? Or, if I may put it compendiously, what's it all about? At first sight it seems almost abnormal, you know, but I suppose we shall get accustomed to it.”