Many years previous he and Slavin had been non-coms together in the Yukon, and other divisions of the Force, and now, delving back into their memories of crime and criminals, they cited many old and grim cases, more or less similar to the one in hand.  Yorke and Redmond listened eagerly to their narration, but Gully betrayed only a sort of taciturn interest.  If he had any experiences of his own, he apparently did not consider it worth while to contribute them just then; though to Slavin and Yorke he was known to be a man who had travelled far and wide.

“Ah!” remarked the inspector, a trifle bitterly.  “If only some of these smart individuals who write fool detective stories, with their utterly impracticable methods, theories, and deductions, were to climb out of their arm-chairs and tackle the real thing—­had to do it for their living—­they’d make a pretty ghastly mess of things I’m thinking.  It all looks so mighty easy—­in a book.  You can see exactly how the thing happened, put your hand on the man who did it, and all that, right from the start.  And you begin to wonder, pityingly, why the police were such fools as Dot to have seen through everything right away.”

He paused a moment, continuing:  “This is a law-abiding country.  Crimes like this are exceptional.  We’re bound to get to the bottom of this sooner or later.  When we do—­there’ll be quite a lot of things crop up in our minds that we’ll be wondering we never thought of before.  Let me have another look at that paper imprint of that over-shoe, Sergeant!”

Silently, Slavin handed it over.  Kilbride scrutinized it carefully, and again went over all notes and figures connected with the crime.  “Must have been a tall man—­possibly six feet, or over, from the length of the stride,” he muttered, “and heavy, from the depth of the imprint.”  He noted the distance from the big boulder to where the body had first fallen.  “Gad! what shooting! . . .  The man must have been a holy fright with a revolver—­to have confidence in himself to be able to kill at that range.  I’ve never known anything like it.  Well! . . .  One sure thing”—­he laughed grimly—­“you can’t go searching every decent citizen here for a Luger gun, or demanding to measure his feet—­without reasonable suspicion.  Why!  It might be you, Sergeant—­or Mr. Gully, here . . . you’re both big men. . . .”

Long afterwards, well they remembered the inspector’s random jest—­how Gully, with one hand slid into his breast, and the other dragging at his great drooping moustache (mannerisms of his) had joined in the general laugh with his hollow, guttural “Ha! ha!”

The inspector’s levity suddenly vanished.  “That old fool of a livery-stable keeper, Lee, or whatever his name is . . . if only he, or someone had been around when the horse was brought back that night!  D——­n it! there must have been somebody around, surely.  That’s what this case hinges on.”