They moved round the rock a little. The inspector's face lighted up at the sight of the footprints. “Rubber soles, sir; and a fairly well-marked set of screws to check anything with. If they do belong to the murdered man, we'll have no trouble in identifying them.” Sir Clinton agreed. “Don't bother taking casts of them yet. We may not need them. Let's go on to the next tracks.” They had to cut across Billingford's trail and walk to the far end of the rock before they reached their objective. “This is the other end of the track we noticed before,” Wendover pointed out. “It's the woman in golfing-shoes who came down from the road near the groyne.” The inspector fell to work on his casting, whilst Sir Clinton took another series of measurements of the length of pace shown by the footprints. “Twenty-six and a half inches,” he reported, after several trials of comparison. “Now, once the inspector's finished with his impression-taking, we can have a look at the body. We've just done the business in time, for the tide's almost washing the base of the rock now.” Chapter VII The Letter Followed by Wendover and the inspector, Sir Clinton mounted the platform of Neptune's Seat, which formed an outcrop some twenty yards long and ten in breadth, with the landward part rising sharply so as to form a low natural wall. The body of the murdered man lay on the tiny plateau at the end nearest the groyne. It rested on its back, with the left arm slightly doubled up under the corpse. Blood had been welling from a wound in the breast. “Anybody claim him?” inquired Sir Clinton. “He isn't one of the hotel guests, at any rate.” Armadale shook his head. “I don't recognise him.” Sir Clinton lifted the head and examined it. “Contused wound on the back of the skull. Probably got it by falling against the rock as he came down.” He turned to the feet of the body. “The boots have rubber soles with a pattern corresponding to the tracks up yonder. That's all right,” he continued. “His clothes seem just a shade on the flashy side of good taste, to my mind. Age appears to be somewhere in the early thirties.” He bent down and inspected the wound in the breast. “From the look of this hole I guess you're right, inspector. It seems to have been a small-calibre bullet—possibly from an automatic pistol. You'd better make a rough sketch of the position before we shift him. There's no time to get a camera up here before the tide swamps us.” Armadale cut one or two scratches on the rock as reference points, and then, after taking a few measurements, he made a rough diagram of the body's position and attitude. “Finished?” Sir Clinton asked; and, on getting an assurance from the inspector, he knelt down beside the dead man and unfastened the front of the raincoat which clothed the corpse.