as having once borne these
unusual blossoms. One or two blooms still hung to the bushes and the
detective, who was a great lover of flowers, picked them and put them in
his buttonhole. While he did this, his keen eyes were darting about the
place taking in all the details. This vacant lot had evidently been used
as an unlicensed dumping ground for some time, for all sorts of odds and
ends, old boots, bits of stuff, silk and rags, broken bottles and empty
tin cans, lay about between the bushes or half buried in the earth. What
had once been an orderly garden was now an untidy receptacle for waste.
The pedantically neat detective looked about him in disgust, then
suddenly he forgot his displeasure and a gleam shot up in his eye. It
was very little, the thing this man had seen, this man who saw so much
more than others.

About ten paces from where he stood a high wooden fence hemmed in the
lot. The fence belonged to the neighbouring property, as the lot in
which he stood was not protected in any way. To the back it was closed
off by a corn field where the tall stalks rustled gently in the faint
morning breeze. All this could be seen by anybody and Muller had seen it
all at his first glance. But now he had seen something else. Something
that excited him because it might possibly have some connection with
the newly discovered crime. His keen eyes, in glancing along the wooden
fence at his right hand, had caught sight of a little twig which had
worked its way through the fence. This twig belonged to a willow tree
which grew on the other side, and which spread its grey-green foliage
over the fence or through its wide openings. One of the little twigs
which had crept in between the planks was broken, and it had been broken
very recently, for the leaves were still fresh and the sap was oozing
from the crushed stem. Muller walked over to the fence and examined the
twig carefully. He soon saw how it came to be broken. The broken part
was about the height of a man's knee from the ground. And just at this
height there was quite a space between two of the planks of the fence,
heavy planks which were laid cross-ways and nailed to thick posts. It
would have been very easy for anybody to get a foothold in this open
space between the planks.

It was very evidently some foot thrust in between the planks which had
broken the little willow twig, and its soft rind had left a green
mark on the lower plank. "I wonder if that has anything to d