ogise enough. I
only hope the scoundrels were no more successful here than they were at
my house?"

"I'm afraid they didn't go quite so empty away."

"God bless my soul! Those cartridge makers ought to indemnify you. But
perhaps they left some traces? That was the worst of it in my
case--neither footmark nor finger-print worth anything to any body!"

"I'm afraid they left neither here."

"But you don't know that, Mr. Delavoye; you can't know it before
morning. The frost broke up with the fog, you must remember, and the
ground's as soft as butter. Which way did the blackguards run?"

"Through the garden and over the wall at the back into----"

"Then they _must_ have left their card this time!" said Colonel
Cheffins, ten years younger in his excitement, and even more alert and
wide-awake than we had found him the night before. He did not conceal
his anxiety to conduct immediate investigations in the garden. But Uvo
persuaded him to wait till we had finished our drinks, and we got him to
sit down at the desk, trembling with keenness.

"You see," said Uvo, leaning forward in the arm-chair and opening a
drawer in the pedestal between them, "one of them did leave something in
the shape of a card, and here it is."

And there lay the cast shoe, in the open drawer, under the colonel's
eyes and mine as I looked over his shoulder.

"Why, it's an evening pump!" he exclaimed.

"Exactly."

"Made by quite a good maker, I should say. All in one piece, without a
seam, I mean."

"I see. I hadn't noticed that; but then I haven't your keen eye,
colonel. You really must come out into the garden with us."

"I shall be delighted, and we might take this with us to fit into any
tracks----"

"Precisely; but there's just one thing I should like you to do first, if
you would," said Uvo deferentially, and I bent still further over the
colonel's shiny head.

"What's that, Mr. Delavoye?"

"Just to try on the glass slipper--so to speak, Colonel
Cheffins--because it's so extraordinarily like the one you were wearing
when you were here before!"

There was a moment's pause in which I saw myself quite plainly in the
colonel's head. Then, with a grunt and a shrug, he reached out his left
hand for the shoe, but his right slid inside his Jaeger jacket, and that
same second my arms were round him. I felt and grabbed his revolver as
soon as he did, and I held the barrel clear of our bodies while he
emptied all six chambers through his ga