“And what earthly good would that be?” he demanded. “Here are his tracks stretching back for the best part of a mile over the sands. Lifting him for twenty yards or so at the end of that doesn't seem much use. Besides, as I read the tracks, that's an impossibility. No. 2's tracks are mixed up with No. 3's in the second part of the trail, and sometimes one was ahead and sometimes the other of them. Two men don't waltz round like that when they're carrying anyone, usually. It's impossible, for their footmarks show they were both walking straight ahead all the time; and if they were carrying a man between them they'd have had to reverse somehow if the front man changed round to the rear. That's no good, Mr. Wendover.” “What do you propose then, inspector?” Wendover inquired, without troubling to repress a nettled tone in his voice. “I propose to take casts of their footprints and hunt up shoes to match, if I can.” “I shouldn't trouble, inspector,” Sir Clinton interposed. “Look at the marks. They seem to me to be about the biggest size of shoe you could buy. The impressions are light; which seems to suggest a medium weight distributed over an abnormally large foot-area. In other words, these shoes were not fits at all; they were probably extra-sized ones padded to suit or else, possibly, put on above normal shoes. Compare the lengths of the steps, too. If these men had heights anything in proportion to the size of their shoes, they would be six-footers on any reasonable probability, whereas their pace is no longer than mine. There's no certainty, of course; but I'm prepared to bet that you'll get nothing by shoe-hunting. And by this time these shoes have been destroyed, or thrown away in some place where you'll never find them. These fellows are smarter lads than you seem to think.” Rather mollified by the inspector's failure, Wendover tried to draw the chief constable. “What do you make of it yourself, Clinton?” Somewhat to the surprise of both his hearers, Sir Clinton extended the range of the subject under discussion. “Motive is what interests me at present,” he confessed. “We've had the Peter Hay case, the Staveley affair, the shooting of Cargill, and this vanishing trick of Fordingbridge's. There must have been some incentive at the back of each of them. Eliminate Cargill's affair for the present, and the other three are all concerned with one or other of the Foxhills people. The odds against that happening by accident are a bit too heavy for probability, aren't they?” “Obviously,” Wendover admitted.