es
like this are exceptional. We're bound to get to the bottom of this
sooner or later. When we do--there'll be quite a lot of things crop up
in our minds that we'll be wondering we never thought of before. Let me
have another look at that paper imprint of that over-shoe, Sergeant!"

Silently, Slavin handed it over. Kilbride scrutinized it carefully, and
again went over all notes and figures connected with the crime. "Must
have been a tall man--possibly six feet, or over, from the length of the
stride," he muttered, "and heavy, from the depth of the imprint." He
noted the distance from the big boulder to where the body had first
fallen. "Gad! what shooting! . . . The man must have been a holy
fright with a revolver--to have confidence in himself to be able to kill
at that range. I've never known anything like it. Well! . . . One sure
thing"--he laughed grimly--"you can't go searching every decent citizen
here for a Luger gun, or demanding to measure his feet--without
reasonable suspicion. Why! It might be you, Sergeant--or Mr. Gully,
here . . . you're both big men. . . ."

Long afterwards, well they remembered the inspector's random jest--how
Gully, with one hand slid into his breast, and the other dragging at his
great drooping moustache (mannerisms of his) had joined in the general
laugh with his hollow, guttural "Ha! ha!"

The inspector's levity suddenly vanished. "That old fool of a
livery-stable keeper, Lee, or whatever his name is . . . if only he, or
someone had been around when the horse was brought back that night!
D----n it! there must have been somebody around, surely. That's what
this case hinges on."

He looked at his watch. "Well! Work on that--to your utmost, Sergeant.
Stay right with it until you get that evidence. You'll drop onto your
man sooner or later, I know. That train should be in soon, now. I'll
have to get back. The Commissioner's due from Regina, sometime today,
and I've got to be on hand. Wire the finding of the inquest as soon as
it's over, and send in a full crime-report of everything!"

He glanced casually at the bruised faces of Yorke and Redmond. "You men
must have had quite a tussle with that fellow, Moran!" he remarked
whimsically. "You seem to have come off the best, Sergeant. You're not
marked at all."

"Some tussle all right, Sorr!" agreed that worthy evenly, his tongue in
his cheek. "Yu' go git yu're prisoner, Ridmond, an' be ready whin that
thrain