as he escaped through the alleyway. The
impressions showed this, the left heel being heavily marked, while the ball
of the left foot was much fainter, as if the left ankle movement had been
hampered by rheumatism or gout. It was for this reason that Coquenil had
been at such pains to learn whether Kittredge suffered from these maladies.
It appeared that he did not. Indeed, M. Paul himself remembered the young
man's quick, springy step when he left the cab that fatal night to enter
Bonneton's house. So now he proposed to make Lloyd walk back and forth
several times in a pair of his own boots over soft earth in the prison yard
and then show that impressions of these new footprints were different _in
the pressure marks_, and probably in the length of stride, from those left
in the alleyway. This would be further indication, along with the
differences already noted in the nails, that the alleyway footprints were
not made by Kittredge.

Not made by Kittredge, reflected the detective, but by a man wearing
Kittredge's boots, a man wearing the missing third pair, the stolen pair!
Ah, there was a nut to crack! This man must have stolen the boots, as he
had doubtless stolen the pistol, to throw suspicion on an innocent person.
No other conclusion was possible; yet, he had not returned the boots to
Kittredge's room after the crime. Why not? It was essential to his purpose
that they be found in Kittredge's room, he must have intended to return
them, something quite unforeseen must have prevented him from doing so.
_What had prevented the assassin from returning Kittredge's boots?_

As soon as Coquenil reached the prison he was shown into the director's
private room, and he noticed that M. Dedet received him with a strange
mixture of surliness and suspicion.

"What's the trouble?" asked the detective.

"Everything," snarled the other, then he burst out: "What the devil did you
mean by sending that girl to me?"

"What did I mean?" repeated Coquenil, puzzled by the jailer's hostility.
"Didn't she tell you what she wanted?"

Dedet made no reply, but unlocking a drawer, he searched among some
envelopes, and producing a square of faded blotting paper, he opened it
before his visitor.

"There!" he said, and with a heavy finger he pointed to a scrawl of words.
"There's what she wrote, and you know damned well you put her up to it."

Coquenil studied the words with increasing perplexity. "I have no idea what
this means," he declare