Nobody spoke.
“We fished them out with a hay-fork,” Webley said. “Don’t any of you gentlemen recognize it?”
Dr. Ackrington made a brusque movement. “Yes, Doctor?” Webley said at once. “You were going to say something?”
“I believe — I think that quite possibly they were Questing’s.”
“His? But you told me he wore evening shoes, Doctor.”
“Yes. There’s a new development, however. My nephew — Perhaps we should explain.”
Simon cleared his throat. “I told them about it down at your show, Sergeant. It was during my investigation on the Peak.”
Dikon wondered if for a fraction of a second Webley had looked resigned, if his singularly inexpressive face had been blurred momentarily with the glaze of boredom. He passed his flat fingers over his jowl, stared at Simon and said: “Oh, yes?” Simon embarked with a great air of consequence upon an account of their visit to the Peak. He forgot to include Dikon in his recital. “The night before when I was out on the rock, I picked that Questing was signalling from this ledge on the Peak. That’s why I went straight up there yesterday morning. Soon as I got there I looked for footprints and did I find them! Two beauties. Squatting on his heels, he’d been, under the lee of the bank. Here! You let me have a look at the soles of the boots and I reckon I’ll tell you if they made these prints on the Peak. That’s a fair pop, isn’t it?”
Webley went out and returned with the second boot. It was further advanced in disintegration than its mate. He laid them on their sides with their soles towards Simon.
“Some of the sprigs are gone,” he said. “You can see where they’ve been, though. How about it?”
Simon leant forward portentously and stared at the boots. He counted under his breath and his face grew redder and redder.
“How about it?” repeated Webley.
“Give us a chance,” said Simon. He laughed uncomfortably. “I’ve just got to think. You know. You have to concentrate on a thing like this.”
“That’s right,” said Webley impassively.
Simon concentrated.
Gaunt lit a cigarette. “The young investigator seems to be going into a trance,” he said. “I don’t think I shall wait for the revelation. May I be excused?”
“Don’t you start being funny,” said Simon angrily. “This is important. You stay where you are.” Dikon took out his notebook and Simon pounced on it. “Here! Why didn’t you give me that before?” He ruffled the pages. “This is what I wanted all the time, Mr. Webley. I saw the significance of these prints right away and I got Bell to make a sketch of them. Wait till I find it.”
“Was Mr. Bell up there with you?”
“That’s right. Yes, I took him along as a witness. Here,” cried Simon in triumph, “here it is. Look at that.”
Dikon, having made the sketch, had a pretty clear recollection of the prints. He decided that they might have been made by the boots on the table. Such hobnails as remained, as well as the scars left by those that had fallen out, corresponded, he thought, with the impressions he had copied. Webley, breathing placidly through his mouth, shielded the sketch with his hand and compared it with his muddy exhibits. He looked at Dikon.
“Would you have any objection, Mr. Bell, to my taking possession of this page?”
“None.”
“That’ll be quite O.K., Mr. Webley,” said Simon magnificently.
“Much obliged, Mr. Bell,” said Webley and neatly detached the page.
Gaunt said: “And in what condition is our fugitive Questing now, Dr. Ackrington? Is he galloping away to some hide-out, dressed in dungarees and patent-leather pumps, or is he capering about in the rude nude?”
Dr. Ackrington darted a glance of loathing at Gaunt and said nothing.
Webley said: “You’ve been telling them about your theory, have you, Doctor? Disappearance, eh? You’ll find it difficult to fit in these boots, won’t you?”
“The difficulty,” said Dr. Ackrington, “is not insuperable. Isn’t it at least possible that Questing realized he had left recognizable footprints and threw the boots he had intended to wear into the cauldron?”
“You are as nimble in the concoction of unlikelihoods,” said Gaunt, “as a Baconian nosing in the plays of Shakespeare.”
“An utter irrelevancy, Gaunt. A little while ago you supported my contention. I find your change of attitude incomprehensible.”
“I’m afraid that on consideration I find all your theories equally irrelevant and incomprehensible. I’m afraid that for me, however selfishly, the point of interest lies in the fact that whether Questing slipped, was pushed, or escaped, I cannot, in the wildest realms of conjecture, be supposed to have had anything to do with the event. If I’m wanted, Sergeant Webley, I shall be in my room.”
“That’ll be quite O.K., thank you, Mr. Gaunt,” said Webley and watched him go.
When Gaunt had gone, the meeting dissolved into a series of mumbled duologues. Dikon heard Webley say that he wanted to look through their rooms. Mrs. Claire said that he would find them dreadfully untidy. It appeared that Huia, stimulated to the point of hysteria by the events of the last twelve hours, was incapable of performing her duties. She slept over at the native village which, Mrs. Claire explained, she reported to be seething with terrified speculations.
“They get such strange ideas, you know,” said Mrs. Claire to Webley. “One tries to tell them that all their old superstitions are wrong but still they are there — underneath.”
Dikon thought that Webley pricked up his ears at this. How ever the Sergeant merely said in his sluggish way that he would rather the rooms were not touched and that he hoped nobody would object to his looking through them. He added the ominous request that they should all remain on the premises as he would like to see them again. He went off with the Colonel in the direction of the study. Mr. Falls looked after them meditatively.
Dikon went to see his employer and found him on the sofa with his eyes closed.
“Well?” said Gaunt, without opening his eyes.
“Well, sir, the meeting’s dissolved.”
“I’ve been thinking. The Maori youth must be found. The youth who saw me go up to the main road.”
“Eru Saul?”
“Yes. They must get a statement from him. It will establish my alibi.” He opened his eyes. “You’d better tell the empurpled Sergeant.”
“He’s not to be approached at the moment, I fancy,” said Dikon, who did not care at all for this suggestion.
“Well, don’t leave it too long. After all it’s of some slight importance since it protects me from a charge of homicide,” said Gaunt bitterly.
“Is there anything else I can do?”
“No. I’m utterly prostrated. I want to be left alone.”
Hoping that this mood would persist, Dikon went outside. There was no one about. He crossed the pumice sweep and wandered up and down the path by the warm lake. Wai-ata-tapu was unusually silent. The familiar morning sounds of housework were not to be heard or the voices of Mrs. Claire and Barbara screeching companionably to each other from different rooms. He could see Huia moving about in the dining-room. Presently Smith and Simon walked round the house, Simon discoursing magnificently. Webley came out of the study, unlocked the door of Questing’s room and went in. Dikon was over-stimulated and so restless that he was unable to think closely about Questing’s disappearance or indeed about anything. He was conscious that he had been frustrated at the moment of departure upon an emotional journey; he was both dissatisfied and apprehensive.
Presently Barbara came out of the house. She looked about her in a desultory fashion and, after a moment, caught sight of him. He waved vigorously. She hesitated and then, with a backward glance, came to meet him.