Page:The Viaduct Murder (1926).pdf/22

the early Basque poets always speak of the night not as falling but as rising. I suppose they had a right to look at it that way. Now, for myself———"

Marryatt, fortunately, knew him well enough to interrupt him. "It's the sort of afternoon," he said darkly, "on which one wants to murder somebody, just to relieve one's feelings."

"You would be wrong," said Reeves. "Think of the footmarks you'd be bound to leave behind you in mud like this. You would be caught in no time."

"Ah, you've been reading The Mystery of the Green Thumb. But tell me, how many murderers have really been discovered by their footprints? The bootmakers have conspired to make the human race believe that there are only about half a dozen different sizes of feet, and we all have to cram ourselves into horrible boots of one uniform pattern, imported by the gross from America. What does Holmes do next?"

"Well, you see," put in Gordon, "the detectives in the book always have the luck. The murderer generally has a wooden leg, and that doesn't take much tracing. The trouble in real life is the way murderers go about unamputated. And then there's the left-handed men, how conveniently they come in! I tried detection once on an old pipe, and I could show you from the way the side of it was charred that the owner of it was right-handed. But there are so many right-handed people."