of what, in spring, would bloom into a formal garden. He satisfied himself that there seemed no access to the balcony from the ground unless one used a ladder or were endowed with those special and fortunately rare qualities which transform an otherwise normal person into a human fly.
The house was five windows wide; the two on the right of the bathroom belonged to Mrs. Endicott’s room, and the two on its left to her husband’s. He flashed on his electric torch and examined all five sills. None showed a trace of recent passage, and there was no very good reason, he realized, why any of them should. They were clean, windswept, and smooth.
How pleasant it would be, he reflected, to come across the perfect imprint of a shoe, or a rubber, or—what was it that was so popular at the moment?—of course: the footprint of a gorilla. The case would then be what was technically known as an open-and-shut one. He’d simply take the train for California and arrest Lon Chaney, and—But enough.
And the floor itself on the balcony was smugly lacking in clues. He relinquished the keen sharp air, the star-heavy night, and returned to the bathroom by way of its window, which he closed, and again drew down its lemon-coloured shade.
A cake of soap in a container set in the wall above a basin attracted his attention. It was so incredibly dirty. Someone with exceptionally dirty hands had used it and either hadn’t bothered to rinse it off or else hadn’t had the time to. The dirt had dried on it.
He couldn’t vision such a condition of uncleanliness in connection with the hands of either Mr. or Mrs. Endicott, unless there had been some obscure reason. He preferred to think for the moment that the hands had belonged, and presumably still did, to the murderer. That, of course, eliminated the gorilla. What a pity it was, he reflected, that he was so