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“‘Another thing is that this candle thus firmly fastened on the table was never alight there. If it had ever been burning in its position on the table, some of the drops of melted wax would have fallen about it.

“‘You will observe that, while the candle is firmly fixed, it does not set straight; it is inclined at least ten degrees out of perpendicular. In that position it couldn’t have burned for a moment without dripping melted wax on the table. And there’s none on the table; there has never been any on it. Your glass shows not the slightest evidence of a wax stain.’ He added: ‘Therefore the candle is a blind; false evidence to give us the impression of a night affair.’

“Sir Henry’s jaw sagged; now his mouth gaped. ‘True,’ he said. ‘True, true.’ He seemed to get some relief to his damaged deductions out of the repeated word.

“The irony in Mr. Meadows’ voice increased a little. ‘Nor is that all,’ he said. ‘The smear on the floor, and the stains in which the naked foot tracked, are not human blood. They’re not any sort of blood. It was clearly evident when you had your lens over them. They show no coagulated fiber. They show only the evidences of dye – weak dye – watered red ink, I’d say.’

“I thought Sir Henry was going to crumple up in his chair. He seemed to get loose and baggy in some extraordinary fashion, and his gaping jaw worked. ‘But the footprints,’ he said, ‘the naked footprints?’ His voice was a sort of stutter-the sort of shaken stutter of a man who has come a’ tumbling cropper.

“The American actually laughed: he laughed as we sometimes laugh at a mental defective.

“‘They’re not footprints!’ he said. ‘Nobody ever had a foot cambered like that, or with a heel like it, or with toes like it. Somebody made those prints with his hand – the edge of his palm for the heel and the balls of his fingers for the toes. The wide, unstained distances between these heelprints and the prints of the ball of the toes show the impossible arch.’

“Sir Henry was like a man gone to pieces. ‘But who – who made them?’ he faltered.

“The American leaned forward and put the big glass over the prints that Sir Henry had made with his fingers in the white dust on the mahogany table. ‘I think you know the answer to your question,’ he said. ‘The whorls of these prints are identical with those of the toe tracks.’

“Then he laid the glass carefully down, sat back in his chair, folded his arms and looked at Sir Henry.

“‘Now,’ he said, ‘will you kindly tell me why you have gone to the trouble of manufacturing all these false evidences of a crime?”‘

The girl paused. There was intense silence in the drawing-room. The aged man at the window had turned and was looking at her. The face of the old woman seemed vague and uncertain.

The girl smiled.

“Then,” she said, “the real, amazing miracle happened. Sir Henry got on his feet, his big body tense, his face like iron, his voice ringing.

“‘I went to that trouble,’ he said, ‘because I wished to demonstrate – I wished to demonstrate beyond the possibility of any error – that Mr. Arthur Meadows, the pretended American from St. Paul, was in fact the celebrated criminologist, Karl Holweg Leibnich, of Bonn, giving us the favor of his learned presence while he signaled the German submarines off the east coast roads with his high-powered motor lights.'”

Now there was utter silence in the drawing-room but for the low of the Highland cattle and the singing of the birds outside

For the first time there came a little tremor in the girl’s voice.

“When Sir Henry doubted this American and asked me to go down and make sure before he set a trap for him, I thought – I thought, if Tony could risk his life for England, I could do that much.”

At this moment a maid appeared in the doorway, the trim, immaculate, typical English maid. “Tea is served, my lady,” she said.

The tall, fine old man crossed the room and offered his arm to the girl with the exquisite, gracious manner with which once upon a time he had offered it to a girlish queen at Windsor.

The ancient woman rose as if she would go out before them. Then suddenly, at the door, she stepped aside for the girl to pass, making the long, stooping, backward curtsy of the passed Victorian era.

“After you, my dear,” she said, “always!”