“Two women have recently been here, instead of only one. The location of some of the tracks indicate that they came to spy through the library window and play the eavesdropper. It must have been in the evening, therefore, for they would have been seen in daylight.” “Surely.” “Here are several bruised blades of grass broken off by them and trodden into the soil,” Nick added, picking up a couple of them. “They are too dry and wilted for it to have occurred as recently as last evening, yet they are fresh and green enough to show that it could not have been much longer ago. We can safely say night before last.” “The evening when the veiled woman visited Maybrick.” “Exactly.” “Gee! you must be right, chief, though it’s fine figuring.” “Here’s another curious point, Patsy.” “Namely?” “The two women, if their shoes have any significance, were of a decidedly opposite class,” said Nick. “One wore a narrow, high-heeled shoe, denoting a woman of fashion and means. The heels of the other were broad, both badly worn, and there was a patch on one of the soles. The patch has left its mark in some of these imprints, and the run-down condition of both heels appears in the indentations left by them.” “I see,” said Patsy. “It’s as plain as twice two.” “This woman must be of an opposite class, then, from the other. She wears patched shoes, with the heels half gone, indicating that she cannot afford new ones.” “That’s a sane-and-safe deduction, chief, surely.” “Here is evidence warranting still another.” “How so?” “Note that all the imprints of the high-heeled shoes overlap and partly obliterate those of the cheaper ones,” Nick pointed out. “Plainly, then, the wearer of the former was here later than the other. They were not here together, moreover, or their tracks would not be so intermingled.” “I see the point, chief.” “As near as I now can size it up, the poorer-clad woman, if her garments corresponded with her shoes, arrived here before the other, and she may have been the veiled woman who talked with Maybrick. The other may have seen her, or suspected that she was in the library with Maybrick, and she may have come here to watch them and overhear what passed between them.” “And the two men beyond the picket fence may have been watching both.” “I think so.” “Gee whiz!” Patsy said perplexedly. “All this increases the mix-up, chief, for fair.” “Decidedly,” Nick agreed. “Why were two men and two women here? Can one of them have been the Crandall woman?” “I’m going to find out a little later,” said Nick, a bit grimly. “We first will have a talk with Mrs. Soule, however, and see what we can discover in the house. Miss Farley, though a bright and brainy girl, may have overlooked something.”