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When we got back we found that the policeman left in charge had been nosing about, and whiling away his time by collecting the boots of every one in the house and fitting them to the footprints on the flower-bed. As bad luck would have it, David's shooting-boots exactly fitted the marks." "His shooting-boots?" said Gimblet. "He wouldn't be wearing shooting-boots after dinner."

My poor dear husband, when I first met him, was an eminent Q.C., as you may know, Mr. Gimblet, so I have a very good idea what they're like. I refused him point-blank when he proposed, but he proved to me in three minutes that I'd really accepted him; and it was the same thing ever after.

"One more question. I hear you witnessed a will for Lord Ashiel a day or two before he died?" "Yes, sir I and Mrs. Parsons, the housekeeper." "How did you know it was the will?" "We didn't exactly know it was, sir, but afterwards, when it came out his lordship had told Miss Byrne he had made one, we thought it must have been that." "I see," said Gimblet. "Thank you. That is all I wanted to know."

Having finished his letter, Gimblet put his stylo in his pocket, and turned round to look at the clock. "Twenty minutes to four," he said half-aloud. "I wish to goodness people would keep their appointments punctually, or else not come at all." Five more minutes passed, and he got up and went into the hall. "Higgs," he called, and his faithful servant and general factotum came out of the pantry.

But I haven't taken much notice what the weather has been like." She was disappointed and indignant that he should talk in this trivial strain, when her own heart was nearly bursting, and her every nerve stretched and tingling. She had pinned all her hopes on the arrival of the famous detective. Gimblet heard the change in her tone.

Well, good luck go with you; and let me know if you hit on anything that escapes our men." Gimblet walked back to his flat, his mind full of the tragedy which he had an uneasy feeling he might, in some way, have averted. How, he hardly knew.

"If you will bring one of your men, and come with me yourself," said Gimblet, at the conclusion of the interview, "I think I shall be able to convince you that a mistake has been made. In the meantime there will be no harm done by a watch being kept on the foreign gentleman who is at this moment trolling for salmon on the loch."

He was considerably above the middle height and somewhere about middle age. His costume was of that quiet unobtrusive kind which seems to court retirement, and the sharp glance of his eyes seemed to possess something of the gimblet in their penetrating power. This was no less a personage than Mr Sharp, the inspector of police on the Grand National Trunk Railway.

The man walked straight before him, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and as he strode along the wet roads Gimblet noted with satisfaction the long, narrow, pointed footprints that were deeply impressed in the muddy places. He had no doubt they were the same as those he had noticed on the beach on the day of his arrival at Inverashiel.

He sent Gimblet a couple of brace of grouse, which the detective devoured with great satisfaction, and for the next week no more letters bearing a Scotch postmark were delivered at the Whitehall flat. "Here they come again." Lord Ashiel spoke in a voice scarcely above a whisper, and Juliet crouched low against the peaty wall of the butt.