e."

"No--there's a breakdown somewhere--that's what I'm telling you; but
whether the fault is ours, or a trick has been played to put us
fairly out of the running, no doubt you'll find out soon or late. I
don't see there's anything more we can do up here whether or no."

"There isn't," admitted Mark. "It's all been routine work and a
devil of lot of time wasted in my opinion. Between ourselves, I'm
rather ashamed of myself, Halfyard. I've missed something--the thing
that most mattered. There's a signpost sticking up somewhere that I
never saw."

The inspector nodded.

"It happens so sometimes--cruel vexing--and then people laugh at us
and ask how we earn our money. Now and again, as you say, there's a
danger signal to a case so clear as the nose on a man's face, and
yet, owing to following some other clue, or sticking to a theory
that we feel can and must be the only right one, we miss the real,
vital point till we go and bark our shins on it. And then, perhaps,
it's too late and we look silly."

Brendon admitted the truth of this experience.

"There can only be two possible situations," he said; "either this
was a motiveless murder--and lack of motive means insanity; or else
there was a deep reason for it and Redmayne killed Pendean, after
plotting far in advance to do so and get clear himself. In the first
case he would have been found, unless he had committed suicide in
some such cunning fashion that we can't discover the body. In the
second case, he's a very cute bird indeed and the ride to Paignton
and disposal of the corpse--that all looked so mad--was super-craft
on his part. But, if alive, mad or sane, I'm of opinion he did what
he said in his letter to his brother he meant to do, and got off for
a French or Spanish port. So that's the next step for me--to try and
hunt down the boat that took him."

He pursued this policy, left Princetown for Plymouth on the
following day, took a room at a sailors' inn on the Barbican and
with the help of the harbour authority followed the voyages of a
dozen small vessels which had been berthing at Plymouth during the
critical days.

A month of arduous work he devoted to this stage of the inquiry, and
his investigation produced nothing whatever. Not a skipper of any
vessel involved could furnish the least information and no man
resembling Robert Redmayne had been seen by the harbour police, or
any independent person at Plymouth, despite sharp watchfulness.

A time