It was with not a little curiosity and interest that I awaited his report.  As I sat sipping my tea I could hear his regular tread as he passed along the garden path outside the window.  Then it ceased and was followed by a vague muttering.  He had found something.  All traces of the storm had disappeared and there was every indication of a renewal of the heat-wave; but I knew that the wet soil would have preserved a perfect impression of any imprint made upon it on the previous night.  Nevertheless, with the early morning sun streaming into my window out of a sky as near to turquoise as I had ever seen it in England, I found it impossible to recapture that uncanny thrill which had come to me in the dark hours when out of the shadows under the hedge the great cat’s eyes had looked up at me.

And now, becoming more fully awake, I remembered something else which hitherto I had not associated with the latter phenomenon.  I remembered that lithe and evasive pursuing shape which I had detected behind me on the road.  Even now, however, it was difficult to associate one with the other; for whereas the dimly-seen figure had resembled that of a man (or, more closely, that of a woman) the eyes had looked out upon me from a point low down near the ground, like those of some crouching feline.

Coates’ footsteps sounded again upon the path and I heard him walking round the cottage and through the kitchen.  Finally he reentered the bedroom and stood just within the doorway in that attitude of attention which was part and parcel of the man.  His appearance would doubtless have violated the proprieties of the Albany, for in my rural retreat he was called upon to perform other and more important services than those of a valet.  His neatly shaved chin, stolid red countenance and perfectly brushed hair were unexceptionable of course, but because his duties would presently take him into the garden he wore, not the regulation black, but an ancient shooting-jacket, khaki breeches and brown gaiters, looking every inch of him the old soldier that he was.

“Well, Coates?” said I.

He cleared his throat.

“There are footprints in the radish-beds, sir,” he reported.

“Footprints?”

“Yes, sir.  Very deep.  As though some one had jumped over the hedge and landed there.”

“Jumped over the hedge!” I exclaimed.  “That would be a considerable jump, Coates, from the road.”

“It would, sir.  Maybe she scrambled up.”

“She?”

Coates cleared his throat again.

“There are three sets of prints in all.  First a very deep one where the party had landed, then another broken up like, where she had turned round, and the third set with the heel-marks very deep where she had sprung back over the hedge.”

"She?" I shouted.

“The prints, sir,” resumed Coates, unmoved, “are those of a lady’s high-heeled shoes.”

I sat bolt upright in bed, staring at the man and scarcely able to credit my senses.  Words failed me.  Whereupon: