From Paignton on the following morning he proceeded to Plymouth and directed a strenuous and close inquiry.  But he knew well enough that he was probably too late and judged with certainty that if Robert Redmayne still lived, he would no longer be in England.  Next he returned to Princetown, that he might go over the ground again, even while appreciating the futility of so doing.  But the routine had to be observed.  The impressions of naked feet on the sand were carefully protected.  They proved too indefinite to be distinguished, but he satisfied himself that they represented the footprints of two men, if not three.  He remembered that Robert Redmayne had spoken of bathing in the pools and he strove to prove three separate pairs of feet, but could not.

Inspector Halfyard, who had followed the case as closely as it was possible to do so, cast all blame on Bendigo, the brother of the vanished assassin.

“He delayed of set purpose,” vowed Halfyard, “and them two days may make just all the difference.  Now the murderer’s in France, if not Spain.”

“Full particulars have been circulated,” explained Brendon, but the inspector attached no importance to that fact.

“We know how often foreign police catch a runaway,” he said.

“This is no ordinary runaway, however.  I still prefer to regard him as insane.”

“In that case he’d have been taken before now.  And that makes what was simple before more and more of a puzzle in my opinion.  I don’t believe that the man was mad.  I believe he was and is all there; and that being so, you’ve got to begin over again, Brendon, and find why he did it.  Once grant that this was a deliberately planned murder and a mighty sight cleverer than it looked at first sight, then you’ve got to ferret back into the past and find what motives Redmayne had for doing it.”

But Brendon was not convinced.

“I can’t agree with you,” he answered.  “I’ve already pursued that theory, but it is altogether too fantastic.  We know, from impartial testimony, that the men were the best of friends up to the moment they left Princetown together on Redmayne’s motor bicycle the night of the trouble.”

“What impartial testimony?  You can’t call Mrs. Pendean’s evidence impartial.”

“Why not?  I feel very certain that it is; but I’m speaking now of what I heard at Paignton from Miss Flora Reed, who was engaged to Robert Redmayne.  She said that her betrothed wrote indicating his complete change of opinion; and he also told her that he had asked his niece and her husband to Paignton for the regattas.  What is more, both Miss Reed and her parents made it clear that the soldier was of an excitable and uncertain nature.  In fact Mr. Reed didn’t much approve of the match.  He described a man who might very easily slip over the border line between reason and unreason.  No, Halfyard, you’ll not find any theory to hold water but the theory of a mental breakdown.  The letter he wrote to his brother quite confirms it.  The very writing shows a lack of restraint and self-control.”