At this shop he inquired, as before, if any of the assistants recollected a man like that of the photo he showed having purchased a pair of shoes of the given number. At once he had an affirmative response. One salesman remembered Austin having called on the Monday in question, and after having been carefully fitted, having bought the shoes. The salesman had according to his usual custom handed Austin a card bearing the number of the shoes. He had offered to send the parcel, but Austin had said he was running for a train and would take it with him. The transaction had occurred about three o’clock. ‘Bully for me!’ thought Tanner as he drove to St Pancras, _en route_ for Halford. ‘See what a little imagination does!’ The theory he had evolved on the previous night now seemed not unlikely to be the truth. According to it, Austin had gone to town on the Monday and purchased two identical pairs of shoes. The first he had had fitted in the usual way in one shop; the second had been selected in another shop as being of the same number as the first. This had been rendered possible by carrying out the purchases in two different branch shops of the same firm. One pair he had bought openly giving his name and having the parcel sent to St Pancras; the other transaction he intended to remain a secret. Arrived at his home, Austin had carried out the same tactics. One pair he had spoken of and given into his butler’s charge; the other he had locked away privately. No one was supposed to know, and no one did know, that he had purchased more than one pair. Let us call these two the known pair and the secret pair. On the evening of the murder, then, Austin puts on the known pair which the butler had in his charge, goes to Luce Manor, commits the murder, walks home through some muddy ground, gets the shoes wet, changes them on returning home, where they dry during the night and are cleaned by the butler next day, all exactly as the latter had stated. But at some other time, probably in the dead of Wednesday night, Austin gets up, puts on the other pair—the secret pair—and slipping out of his house unnoticed, makes the tracks at the Abbey. To make the deception more convincing he has previously dinted the sole of one of these ‘secret’ shoes, so that this dint will show on the prints at the Abbey. At some convenient opportunity when the butler is out of the way he himself cleans the secret pair, and then _changes them for the others_. The dinted pair which made the tracks at the Abbey thus become those in the butler’s charge; the others, in which the murder was committed, are locked away by Austin, who doubtless takes an early opportunity of destroying them. Tanner had to admit the ingenuity of the plan. To anyone not knowing there were two pairs of shoes in question, the alibi would be overwhelming.