‘We’d better walk along the edge,’ said Professor Fordney, as they started down the only path leading through the swamp.
‘I never thought of that. I was on the porch when Barton left,’ said Bob, as he trudged along. ‘Ten minutes later, I heard a shot. I ran down the path and found him about five hundred yards from the house, bleeding terribly from a wound in the head. I dashed back for the first-aid kit and bandaged him as best I could. He died shortly afterwards. Then I returned and telephoned you.’
Reaching the body of Barton, he explained, ‘I turned him over so that I could dress his head.’
‘He must have been shot from over there, because those three sets of footprints are yours and the other one Barton’s,’ said Fordney, after a careful examination. ‘Let’s look in that underbrush.’
Walking into it a few yards, he said, ‘Here’s where the murderer stood, all right. See those powder-marks on the leaves?’
While removing the branch, Fordney cut his finger.
‘Better sterilize that, Professor.’
Back at the cottage, as he was about to pick up a mercurochrome bottle from the kit Bob had used, he observed a spot of blood on the label. Walking over to the basin, he saw Bob in the mirror above it, furtively slip a pair of scissors into the kit.
Turning slowly around, he said, ‘I’ll have to hold you on suspicion of murder.’
