I stooped over the first set of marks. Clearly indented, I perceived the impressions of two small, bare feet, and, eighteen or twenty inches ahead, those of two small hands. I experienced a sudden chill; my blood seemed momentarily to run coldly in my veins, and I longed to depart from the shadow of the trees, from the neighbourhood of the Black Gap, and from the neighbourhood of the man who had died there. For it seemed to me that a barefooted infant had recently crawled from the side of the dead man into the coppice overhanging the tarn. Looking up, I found East's steely eyes set upon me strangely. "Well!" said he, "do you not miss something that you anticipated finding?" I hesitated, fearfully. Then: "Sir Jeffrey carries no cane," I began---- "Good! I had failed to note that. Good! But what else?" Closely I surveyed the body, noting the disarranged garments, the discoloured face. "What of this torn brown paper?" snapped my friend. "Good heavens!" I cried; and like a flash my glance sought again those mysterious tracks--those tracks of _something_ that had crawled away from the murdered man. "Where," inquired East deliberately, "is the Burmese porcelain ape of which we have heard? And, since there are no tracks _approaching_ the body, where did the creature come from that made those retiring from it, and ... what manner of creature was it?" III At East's request (for my friend was a man of very great influence) the police, beyond the unavoidable formalities, took no steps to apprehend the murderer of Sir Jeffrey. East had a long interview with the dead man's daughter, and, shortly afterwards, went off to London, leaving me to my own devices. The subject of the strange death of the baronet naturally engrossed my attention to the exclusion of all else. Especially, my mind kept reverting to the tracks which we had discovered leading from the dead man's body into the coppice. I scarcely dared to follow my ideas to what seemed to be their logical conclusion. That the track was that, not of a child, but of an _ape_, I was now convinced. No such track approached where the victim had lain; no track of any kind, other than that of his own heavy footprints, led to the spot ... but the track of an ape receded from it; and the baronet had been carrying an ape (inanimate, certainly, according to all known natural laws), which was missing when his body was found! "These are the reflections of a madman!" I said aloud. "Am I seriously considering the possibility of a blue porcelain monkey having come to life? If so, since no other footprints have been discovered, I shall be compelled, logically, to assume that the blue porcelain monkey strangled Sir Jeffrey!" My friend, East, attached very great importance to the missing curio; this he had not disguised from me. But, beyond spending half an hour or so among the trees of the coppice and around the margin of the Black Gap, he had not to my knowledge essayed any quest for it.