American Sherlocks by Nick Rennison (reading like a writer .TXT) 📕

But the detective didn’t seem so reassured by Fred’s statements. Indeed, I believe he really thought that Christabel’s brother was guilty of theft.

But I believed implicitly every word Fred had uttered, and begging him to come with me, I led the way again to the sitting room. Mr Wayne and Janet White came too, and the four of us scrutinized the floor, walls and furniture of the room over and over again. ‘There’s one thing certain,’ I said thoughtfully: ‘The crystal was taken either by someone in the house or someone out of it. We’ve been confining our suspicions to those inside. Why not a real burglar?’

‘But the windows are fastened on the inside,’ said Janet.

‘I know it,’ I replied. ‘But if a burglar could slip a catch with a thin-bladed knife – and they often do – then he could slip it back again with the same knife and so divert suspicion.’

‘Bravo, Miss Frost!’ said Mr Wayne, with an admiring glance at me. ‘You have the true detective instinct. I’ll go outside and see if there are any traces.’

A moment later he was on the veranda and excitedly motioning us to raise the window. Fred pushed back the catch and opened the long French window that opened on the front veranda.

‘I believe Miss Frost has discovered the mystery,’ said Mr Wayne, and he pointed to numerous scratches on the sash-frame. The house had been painted recently, and it was seen easily that the fresh scratches were made by a thin knife-blade pushed between the sashes.

‘By Jove!’ cried Fred, ‘that’s it, Elinor; and the canny fellow had wit enough to push the catch back in place after he was outside again.’

I said nothing, for a moment. My thoughts were adjusting themselves quickly to the new situation from which I must make my deductions. I realized at once that I must give up my theory of the tutor, of course, and anyway I hadn’t had a scrap of evidence against him except his fitness for the position. But, given the surety of burglars from outside, I knew just what to do: look for footprints, to be sure.

I glanced around for the light snow that always falls in detective stories just before the crime is committed, and is testified, usually by the village folk, to have stopped just at the crucial moment. But there wasn’t a sign of snow or rain or even dew. The veranda showed no footprints, nor could the smooth lawn or flagged walks be expected to. I leaned against the veranda railing in despair, wondering what Sherlock Holmes would do in a provoking absence of footprints, when I saw in the flower-bed beneath several well-defined marks of a man’s shoes.

‘There you are, Fred!’ I cried, and rushed excitedly down the steps.

They all followed, and, sure enough, in the soft earth of the wide flower-bed that surrounded the veranda were strong, clear prints of large masculine footgear.

‘That clears us, girls,’ cried Janet gleefully, as she measured her daintily shod foot against the depressions.

‘Don’t touch them!’ I cried. ‘Call Mr Prout the detective.’

Mr Prout appeared, and politely hiding his chagrin at not having discovered these marks before I did, proceeded to examine them closely.

‘You see,’ he said in a pompous and dictatorial way, ‘there are four prints pointing toward the house, and four pointing toward the street. Those pointing to the street are superimposed upon those leading to the house, hence we deduce that they were made by a burglar who crossed the flower-bed, climbed the veranda, stepped over the rail and entered at the window. He then returned the same way, leaving these last footprints above the others.’

As all this was so palpably evident from the facts of the case, I was not impressed much by the subtlety of his deductions and asked what he gathered from the shape of the prints.

He looked at the well-defined prints intently. ‘They are of a medium size,’ he announced at last, ‘and I should say that they were made by a man of average height and weight, who had a normal-sized foot.’

Well, if that wasn’t disappointing! I thought of course that he would tell the man’s occupation and social status even if he didn’t say that he was left-handed or that he stuttered, which is the kind of thing detectives in fiction always discover.

So I lost all interest in that Prout man, and began to do a little deducing on my own account. Although I felt sure, as we all did, that the thief was a burglar from outside, yet I couldn’t measure the shoes of an absent and unidentified burglar, and somehow I felt an uncontrollable impulse to measure shoes.

Without consulting anybody, I found a tape-measure and carefully measured the footprints. Then I went through the house and measured all the men’s shoes I could find, from the stable-boy’s up to Fred’s.

It’s an astonishing fact, but nearly all of them fitted the measurements of the prints on the flower-bed. Men’s feet are so nearly universal in size, or rather their shoes are, and too, what with extension soles and queer-shaped lasts, you can’t tell anything about the size or style of a man from his footprints.

So I gave up deducing and went to talk to Fred Farland.

‘Fred,’ I said simply, ‘did you take Christabel’s crystal?’

‘No,’ he answered with equal simplicity, and he looked me in the eyes so squarely and honestly that I knew he spoke the truth.

‘Who did?’ I next inquired.

‘It was a professional burglar,’ said Fred, ‘and a mighty cute one; but I’m going to track him and get that crystal before Christabel comes home.’

‘Let me help!’ I cried eagerly. ‘I’ve got the true detective instinct, and I know I can do something.’

‘You?’ said Fred incredulously. ‘No, you can’t help; but I don’t mind telling you my plan. You see