and so much neglected as the art of tracing footsteps.
Happily, I have always laid great stress upon it, and much
practice has made it second nature to me. I saw the heavy
footmarks of the constables, but I saw also the track of the
two men who had first passed through the garden. It was easy
to tell that they had been before the others, because in
places their marks had been entirely obliterated by the
others coming upon the top of them. In this way my second
link was formed, which told me that the nocturnal visitors
were two in number, one remarkable for his height (as I
calculated from the length of his stride), and the other
fashionably dressed, to judge from the small and elegant
impression left by his boots.

"On entering the house this last inference was confirmed.
My well-booted man lay before me. The tall one, then, had done
the murder, if murder there was. There was no wound upon the
dead man's person, but the agitated expression upon his face
assured me that he had foreseen his fate before it came upon
him. Men who die from heart disease, or any sudden natural
cause, never by any chance exhibit agitation upon their
features. Having sniffed the dead man's lips I detected a
slightly sour smell, and I came to the conclusion that he had
had poison forced upon him. Again, I argued that it had been
forced upon him from the hatred and fear expressed upon his
face. By the method of exclusion, I had arrived at this
result, for no other hypothesis would meet the facts. Do not
imagine that it was a very unheard of idea. The forcible
administration of poison is by no means a new thing in
criminal annals. The cases of Dolsky in Odessa, and of