took off deceased's shoes and put them on the corpse; then he put on a
pair of boots or shoes which he had been carrying--perhaps hung round
his neck--and which had been prepared with nails to imitate Draper's
shoes. In these shoes he again trampled over the area near the corpse.
Then he walked backwards to the Shepherd's Path, and from it again,
still backwards, to the face of the cliff. Here his accomplice had
lowered a rope, by which he climbed up to the top. At the top he took
off the nailed shoes, and the two men walked back to the Gap, where the
man who had carried the rope took his confederate on his back, and
carried him down to the boat to avoid leaving the tracks of stockinged
feet. The tracks that I saw at the Gap certainly indicated that the man
was carrying something very heavy when he returned to the boat."

"But why should the man have climbed a rope up the cliff when he could
have walked up the Shepherd's Path?" the magistrate asked.

"Because," replied Thorndyke, "there would then have been a set of
tracks leading out of the Bay without a corresponding set leading into
it; and this would have instantly suggested to a smart
police-officer--such as Sergeant Payne--a landing from a boat."

"Your explanation is highly ingenious," said the magistrate, "and
appears to cover all the very remarkable facts. Have you anything more
to tell us?"

"No, your Worship," was the reply, "excepting" (here he took from Polton
the last pair of moulds and passed them up to the magistrate) "that you
will probably find these moulds of importance presently."

As Thorndyke stepped from the box--for there was no
cross-examination--the magistrates scrutinized the moulds with an air of
perplexity; but they were too discreet to make any remark.

When the evidence of Professor Copland (which showed that an
unquestionably lethal dose of morphia must have been swallowed) had been
taken, the clerk called out the--to me--unfamiliar name of Jacob Gummer.
Thereupon an enormous pair of brown dreadnought trousers, from the upper
end of which a smack-boy's head and shoulders protruded, walked into the
witness-box.

Jacob admitted at the outset that he was a smack-master's apprentice,
and that he bad been "hired out" by his master to one Mr. Jezzard as
deck-hand and cabin-boy of the yacht _Otter_.

"Now, Gummer," said Anstey, "do you remember the prisoner coming on
board the yacht?"

"Yes. He has been on board twice. The first time w