He led the way along a tangled path, doubled back, plunged into a little spinney and came suddenly to a small shed.

“This is an ancient gamekeeper’s shelter,” he explained, “built a long time ago and almost forgotten now.  What Craig did, without a doubt, was to hide in this.  The Scotland Yard man who took the affair in hand found distinct traces here of recent occupation.  That is how he made his first escape.”

Quest nodded.

“Sure!” he murmured.  “Well now, what about your more extended search?”

“I was coming to that,” Lord Ashleigh replied.  “As Edgar will remember, no doubt, I have always kept a few bloodhounds in my kennels, and as soon as we could get together one or two of the keepers and a few of the local constabulary, we started off again from here.  The dogs brought us without a check to this shed, and started off again in this way.”

They walked another half a mile, across a reedy swamp.  Every now and then they had to jump across a small dyke, and once they had to make a detour to avoid an osier bed.  They came at last to the river.

“Now I can show you exactly how that fellow put us off the scent here,” their guide proceeded.  “He seems to have picked up something, Edgar, in those South American trips of yours, for a cleverer thing I never saw.  You see all these bullrushes everywhere—­clouds of them, all along the river?”

“We call them tules,” Quest muttered.  “Well?”

“When Craig arrived here,” Lord Ashleigh continued, “he must have heard the baying of the dogs in the distance and he knew that the game was up unless he could put them off the scent.  He cut a quantity of these bullrushes from a place a little further behind those trees there, stepped boldly into the middle of the water, waded down to that spot where, as you see, the trees hang over, stood stock still and leaned them all around him.  It was dusk when the chase reached the river bank, and I have no doubt the bullrushes presented quite a natural appearance.  At any rate, although the dogs came without a check to the edge of the river, where he stepped off, they never picked the scent up again either on this side or the other.  We tried them for four or five hours before we took them home.  The next morning, while the place was being thoroughly searched, we came upon the spot where these bullrushes had been cut down, and we found them caught in the low boughs of a tree, drifting down the river.”

The Professor’s tone was filled with something almost like admiration.

“I must confess,” he declared, “I never realised for a single moment that Craig was a person of such gifts.  In all the small ways of life, in campaigning, camping out, dealing with natural difficulties incidental to our expeditions, I have found him invariably a person of resource, ready-witted and full of useful suggestions.  But that he should be able to apply his gifts with such infinite cunning, to a suddenly conceived career of crime, I must admit amazes me.”