“Jove! We'll need to look slippy. The tide's getting near that rock. Look here, inspector. Get hold of one of these fishermen and ask them to pounce on the nearest boat and bring it round to the rock. Then we can leave everything on the rock to the last moment and spend our time on the sands, which haven't got permanent traces and must be cleared up first of all. If we get cut off by the tide, we can always get the body away on a boat, if we have one handy.” The inspector hurried off, waving to attract the attention of the fishermen. In a few moments he was back again. “They say, sir, that the nearest boat is at Flatt's cottage, just on the point yonder. They're off to bring it round. By the way, they warned me against going near that old wreck there, farther along the bay. It seems there's a patch of bad quick-sand just to the seaward side of it—very dangerous.” “All right, inspector. We're not going any farther along in this direction for the present. Let's get back to the rock where the body is. We've still got the other trails of footmarks to examine.” They hurried off towards Neptune's Seat, and at the edge of the rock Sir Clinton halted. “Here's a set of prints—a neatly-shod woman, by the look of them,” he pointed out. “She's come down to the rock and gone back again almost on the same line. Take a cast of good ones, inspector, both left and right feet. Be careful with your first drippings of the wax.” Wendover inspected the line of prints with care. “They don't tell us much,” he pointed out. “Billingford's tracks don't cross them, so there's no saying when they were made. It might have been a visitor coming down to the beach yesterday afternoon.” “Hardly,” interrupted Sir Clinton. “High tide was at half-past eight; and obviously they must have been made a good while after that or else this part of the sands would have been covered. But it was a moonlight night, and it's quite possible someone came down here to look at the sea late in the evening.” “It's a small shoe,” Wendover pursued, without answering the criticism. “Size 3½ or thereabouts,” Armadale amended, glancing up from his work. “I shouldn't make it bigger than a 3½, and it might be even smaller.” Wendover accepted the rectification, and continued. “The step's not a long one either. That looks like a rather small girl with a neat foot, doesn't it?” Sir Clinton nodded. “Looks like it. Have you a tape-measure, inspector? We ought to make a note of the length of the pace, I think. It might turn out useful. One never knows.” The inspector fished a tape-measure from his pocket; and, with the help of Wendover, Sir Clinton made measurements of various distances. “Just twenty-four inches from one right toe-mark to the next,” he announced. “And it seems a very regular walk. Now if you're ready, inspector, we'll go on to the next trail. It's the single one, so it's probably the murdered man's.”