“About an hour ago.”  Her voice was flat and lifeless.

“And where had he been?” Munn’s tone was gentle but insistent.

Her terrified glance sought Mart’s face.  “He’d been on the beach!” she said in a defiant tone.

Mart continued to look at her, but there was no expression in his face.  He still wore his peculiar affable smile.

“Where did these tracks come from, on the floor?”

Swift horror fastened itself on Mrs. Brenner.

“What’s that to you?” she flared.

She heard her husband’s hypocritical and soothing tones.  “Now, now, Olga!  That ain’t the way to talk to these gentlemen.  Tell them who made these tracks.”

“You did!” she cried.  All about her she could feel the smoothness of a falling trap.

Mart smiled still more broadly.

“Look here, Olga, don’t get so warm over it.  You’re nervous now.  Tell the gentlemen who made those tracks.”

She turned to Munn desperately.  “What do you want to know for?” she asked him.

The sharpness of her voice roused old Mrs. Brenner, drowsing in her corner.

“Blood!” she cried suddenly.  “Blood on his hands!”

In the silence that followed, the eyes of the men turned curiously toward the old woman and then sought each other with speculative stares.  Mrs. Brenner, tortured by those long significant glances, said roughly.  “That’s Mart’s mother.  She ain’t right!  What are you bothering us for?”

Dick Roamer put out a hand to plead for her, and tapped Munn on the arm.  There was something touching in her frightened old face.

“A man—­a stranger was killed up on the hill,” Munn told her.

“What’s that got to do with us?” she countered.

“Not a thing, Mrs. Brenner, probably, but I’ve just to make sure where every man in the village was this afternoon.”

Mrs. Brenner’s lids flickered.  She felt the questioning intentness of Sheriff Munn’s eyes on her stolid face and she felt that he did not miss the tremor in her eyes.

“Where was your son this afternoon?”

She smiled defiance.  “I told you, on the beach.”

“Whose room is that?” Munn’s forefinger pointed to Tobey’s closed door.

“That’s Tobey’s room,” said his mother.

“The mud tracks go into that room.  Did he make those tracks, Mrs. Brenner?”

“No!  Oh, no!  No!” she cried desperately.  “Mart made those when he came in.  He went into Tobey’s room!”

“How about it, Brenner?”

Mart smiled with an indulgent air.  “Heard what she said, didn’t you?”

“Is it true?”

Mart smiled more broadly.  “Olga’ll take my hair off if I don’t agree with her,” he said.

“Let’s see your shoes, Brenner?”

Without hesitation Mart lifted one heavy boot and then the other for Munn’s inspection.  The other silent men leaned forward to examine them.