“Possibly he’ll put in an appearance shortly,” Sir Clinton suggested soothingly.
“Oh, of course, if the police are incompetent, there’s no more to be said,” Miss Fordingbridge retorted tartly. “But I thought it was part of their business to find missing people.”
“Well, we’ll look into it, if you wish,” Sir Clinton said, as she seemed obviously much distressed by the state of things. “But really, Miss Fordingbridge, I think you’re taking the matter too seriously. Quite possibly Mr. Fordingbridge went for a longer walk than he intended, and got benighted or something; sprained his ankle, perhaps, and couldn’t get home again. Most probably he’ll turn up safe and sound in due course. In the meantime, we’ll do what we can.”
But when they had left the room, Wendover noticed that his friend’s face was not so cheerful.
“Do you notice, squire,” the chief constable pointed out as they went downstairs, “that everything we’ve been worried with in this neighbourhood seems to be connected with this confounded Fordingbridge lot? Peter Hay—caretaker to the Fordingbridges; Staveley—married one of the family; and now old Fordingbridge himself. And that leaves out of account this mysterious claimant, with his doubtful pack of associates, and also the suspicious way the Fleetwoods are behaving. If we ever get to the bottom of the affair, it’ll turn out to be a Fordingbridge concern entirely, either directly or indirectly. That’s plain to a village idiot.”
“What do you propose to do in this last business?” Wendover demanded.
“Get hold of a pair of old Fordingbridge’s shoes, first of all. We might need them; and we might not have time to come back for them. I’ll manage it through the boots, now. I could have got them from Miss Fordingbridge, I expect, but she might have been a bit alarmed if I’d asked her for them.”
With the shoes in an attaché-case, Sir Clinton set out for the Blowhole, accompanied by Wendover.
“Not much guidance, so far,” he commented, “so we may as well start at the only place she could mention.”
When they reached the Blowhole, out on the headland which formed one horn of the bay, it was only too evident that very little trace was to be expected there. The turf showed no marks of any description. Sir Clinton seemed rather resentful of the expectant manner of Wendover.
“Well, what do you expect me to do?” he demanded brusquely. “I’m not an Australian tracker, you know. And there don’t seem to be any cigar-butts or cigarette-ash or any of these classical clues lying around, even if I could use them if I’d found them. There’s just one chance—that he’s gone down on to the sands.”
As he spoke, he stepped to the cliff-edge and gazed down on the beach.
“If those tracks on the sand happen to be his,” he said, “then we’ve got at least one bit of luck to start with.”
Wendover, coming to the chief constable’s side, saw the footprints of two men stretching clean-cut along the beach until they grew small in the distance.
“We’ll go down there and see what we can make of it,” Sir Clinton suggested. “I’ve telephoned to Armadale to come out from Lynden Sands and meet us. It’s handy that these tracks stretch out in that direction and not into the other bay.”
They descended a steep flight of steps cut on the face of the cliff for the convenience of hotel visitors; and when they reached the sands below, they found the footprints starting out from the bottom of the stair. Sir Clinton opened his attaché-case and pulled out Paul Fordingbridge’s shoes, which he had procured at the hotel.
“The boots told me that Fordingbridge had two pairs of shoes, both of the same pattern and both fairly new; so it should be easy enough to pick out his tracks, if they’re here,” he said, taking one shoe and pressing it into the sand to make an impression of the sole. “That looks all right, squire. The nail pattern’s the same in the shoe and the right-hand set of footmarks.”
“And the mark you’ve just made is a shade larger than the footprint,” Wendover commented, to show that he had profited by Sir Clinton’s lesson of the previous day. “That fits all right. By the way, Clinton, it’s clear enough that these two fellows met up at the top of the stairs and came down together. If they’d met here, there would have been a second set of tracks for Man No. 2, which he’d have made in coming towards the foot of the stairway.”
Sir Clinton nodded his agreement with this inference, put the shoes back in his attaché-case, and set out to follow the tracks across the sands. In a short time they passed Neptune’s Seat, where Sir Clinton paused for a few moments to inspect the work of his diggers.
“That seems an interminable job you’ve set them,” Wendover commented as they walked on again.
“The tides interfere with the work. The men can only work between tides, and each incoming tide brings up a lot of sand and spreads it over the places they’ve dug out already.”
“What are you looking for, Clinton, damn it? It seems an awful waste of energy.”
“I’m looking for the traces of an infernal scoundrel, squire, unless I’m much mistaken; but whether I’ll find them or not is another question altogether. It’s a pure grab in the dark. And, as I suspect I’m up against a pretty smart fellow, I’m not going to give any information away, even to you, for fear he infers something that might help him. He’s probably guessed already what I’m after—one can’t conceal things on the open beach—but I want to keep him guessing, if possible. Come along.”
The tracks ran, clearly marked, across the sands of the bay in the direction of the old wreck which formed a conspicuous landmark on the shore. The chief constable and his companion followed the trail for a time without
