e inquiry. And it
ended by my discovering traces, but very different ones from those which
I had expected. There had been a man in the room, and he had crossed
the lawn coming from the road. I was able to obtain five very clear
impressions of his foot-marks: one in the roadway itself, at the point
where he had climbed the low wall, two on the lawn, and two very faint
ones upon the stained boards near the window where he had entered.
He had apparently rushed across the lawn, for his toe-marks were much
deeper than his heels. But it was not the man who surprised me. It was
his companion."

"His companion!"

Holmes pulled a large sheet of tissue-paper out of his pocket and
carefully unfolded it upon his knee.

"What do you make of that?" he asked.

The paper was covered with he tracings of the foot-marks of some small
animal. It had five well-marked foot-pads, an indication of long nails,
and the whole print might be nearly as large as a dessert-spoon.

"It's a dog," said I.

"Did you ever hear of a dog running up a curtain? I found distinct
traces that this creature had done so."

"A monkey, then?"

"But it is not the print of a monkey."

"What can it be, then?"

"Neither dog nor cat nor monkey nor any creature that we are familiar
with. I have tried to reconstruct it from the measurements. Here are
four prints where the beast has been standing motionless. You see that
it is no less than fifteen inches from fore-foot to hind. Add to that
the length of neck and head, and you get a creature not much less than
two feet long--probably more if there is any tail. But now observe this
other measurement. The animal has been moving, and we have the length
of its stride. In each case it is only about three inches. You have an
indication, you see, of a long body with very short legs attached to it.
It has not been considerate enough to leave any of its hair behind it.
But its general shape must be what I have indicated, and it can run up a
curtain, and it is carnivorous."

"How do you deduce that?"

"Because it ran up the curtain. A canary's cage was hanging in the
window, and its aim seems to have been to get at the bird."

"Then what was the beast?"

"Ah, if I could give it a name it might go a long way towards solving
the case. On the whole, it was probably some creature of the weasel and
stoat tribe--and yet it is larger than any of these that I have seen."

"But what had it to do with the crime?"

"That, a