“Yes,” the inspector agreed, “and a fool. A swinging lamp hung on that hook would have blocked the whole fairway. There isn’t too much room as it is. What a pity we weren’t a bit more careful about footprints in this place. There are plenty of tracks of wet feet here on this oil-cloth; faint, but you could have made them out all right if they hadn’t been all on top of one another. There’s Mr. Foxley’s, the girl’s, mine, and the men who carried out the body, but I’m hanged if I can tell which is which. It’s a regular mix up.” “Yes,” I agreed, “it is all very confused. But I notice one rather odd thing. There are several faint traces of a large right foot, but I can’t see any sign of the corresponding left foot. Can you?” “Perhaps this is it,” said Thorndyke, pointing to a large, vague oval mark. “I have noticed that it seems to occur in some sort of connexion with the big right foot; but I must admit that it is not a very obvious footprint.” “I shouldn’t have taken it for a footprint at all, or at any rate, not a human footprint. It is more like the spoor of some big animal.” “It is,” Thorndyke agreed; “but whatever it is, it seems to have been here before any of the others arrived. You notice that wherever it occurs, it seems to have been trodden on by some of the others.” “Yes, I had noticed that, and the same is true of the big right foot, so it seems probable that they are connected, as you say. But I am hanged if I can make anything of it. Can you, inspector?” The inspector shook his head. He could not recognize the mark as a footprint, but he could see very plainly that he had been a fool not to have taken more care to protect the floor. When the examination of the hall was finished, Thorndyke opened the door and looked at the big, flat doorstep. “What was the weather like, here, on Wednesday evening?” he asked. “Showery,” the inspector replied; “and there were one or two heavy showers during the night. You were noticing that there are no blood-tracks on the doorstep. But there wouldn’t be in any case; for if a man had come out of this door dropping blood, the blood would have dropped on wet stone and got washed away at once.”