me fragments of hardened
mortar gathered in two little heaps. "If you are ready," added he, "I'd
like to hear why you are so interested in this stuff, and what it has to
do with the Stanwick murder."

The investigator paced up and down the room; the smoke from the pipe
lifted about him in small eddies as he moved.

"Two places may be associated mentally," said Ashton-Kirk, "and yet,
physically, they may be as far apart as the poles. At the beginning of
this affair, Nora Cavanaugh's house and 620 Duncan Street were brought
together in my mind only because the murdered man had visited both on
the night of his death. But," and Ashton-Kirk laughed, "mortar is a most
adhesive substance; and it is holding them together quite firmly."

"I don't get you," affirmed Bat, a line of doubt across his forehead.
"Make it a little plainer, will you?"

"At Stanwick you did not follow me over the ground very closely, except
a few times when I specially claimed your attention. Just before I found
the revolver under the fence, I saw a second footprint in the sod--a
cautious footprint--or perhaps 'toeprint' would be better. It was that
of a man, and he had gone tiptoeing lightly around with long steps and
in a most erratic manner."

"Why didn't you mention it?" asked Bat Scanlon, somewhat hurt.

"The prints were few; they were also light and dim; and I was not at all
sure that they meant anything. However, at the other side of the house I
saw them again, but after a few yards I lost them."

"Huh!" said Bat Scanlon.

"But just in the neighborhood of the spot in which they disappeared,"
continued the investigator, "I noted something else. My lens showed me
the impress in the sod of something like a woven fabric. My first
thought was that some one had been walking about in his stockings. But a
closer inspection told me that the outline was much too rigid for that.
And then I realized what had happened. The man who had been tiptoeing so
quietly about had stopped at that point and drawn a pair of woolen
'creepers' over his shoes."

"No!" Bat started up in sudden excitement. "That's a good point. It
shows that this fellow, whatever else he was, was no amateur. The
creeper thing is a regular burglar stunt."

Ashton-Kirk nodded.

"I think you are right," said he. "At any rate it was this gentleman who
tried to lift himself up to the window, and in so doing left that
interesting little ridge of earth on the cellar grating."

"Yes, of