e
taken alive, and threw themselves over the cliff?" asked Wilson.

"Exactly. Look to the right and the left, and you will find no footprints
or other marks anywhere. Go round there to the left, and you will be
satisfied that the most experienced mountaineer that ever lived could
not make a descent, or even anywhere get over the edge of the cliff.
There is no ledge or foothold within fifty feet."

"Utterly impossible," said Melville, after an inspection. "What do you
propose to do?"

"I am going straight back to communicate the discovery to headquarters.
We shall withdraw the cordon and search the coast for the dead bodies."

"Then you will make a fatal mistake," said Melville. "The men are alive
and in hiding in the district. Just examine the prints again. Whose is
the large foot?"

"That is Lamson's, and the small print is Marsh's. Lamson was a tall man,
just over six feet, and Marsh was a little fellow."

"I thought as much," said Melville. "And yet you will find that Lamson
takes a shorter stride than Marsh. Notice, also, the peculiarity that
Marsh walks heavily on his heels, while Lamson treads more on his toes.
Nothing remarkable in that? Perhaps not; but has it occurred to you that
Lamson walked behind Marsh? Because you will find that he sometimes
treads over Marsh's footsteps, though you will never find Marsh treading
in the steps of the other."

"Do you suppose that the men walked backwards in their own footprints?"
asked the inspector.

"No; that is impossible. No two men could walk backwards some two hundred
yards in that way with such exactitude. You will not find a single place
where they have missed the print by even an eighth of an inch. Quite
impossible. Nor do I suppose that two men, hunted as they were, could
have provided themselves with flying-machines, balloons, or even
parachutes. They did not drop over the cliff."

Melville then explained how the men had got away. His account proved to
be quite correct, for it will be remembered that they were caught, hiding
under some straw in a barn, within two miles of the spot. How did they
get away from the edge of the cliff?

64.--_The Runaway Motor-Car._

The little affair of the "Runaway Motor-car" is a good illustration of
how a knowledge of some branch of puzzledom may be put to unexpected use.
A member of the Club, whose name I have at the moment of writing
forgotten, came in one night and said that a friend of his was bicycling
in