‘Professor Fordney,’ said Sheriff Brown, of Lake Dalton, ‘I came to New York to ask your help in clearing up the murder of Horace Perkins at Luckley Lodge.’
‘Sit down and tell me about it,’ invited Fordney.
‘The family chauffeur, returning from the station at ten o’clock on Christmas Eve, found Perkins lying in a field, five yards off the Lodge drive, with his skull bashed in.’
‘He telephoned me immediately and I instructed him to see that nothing was disturbed. Arriving fifteen minutes later, I personally examined the ground so no clues would be destroyed.
‘The only footprints to be found were six of Perkins’s leading from the drive to the spot where he lay. Around the body were a number of deep impressions about two inches square. It had been snowing all day until half an hour before the discovery of Perkins.
‘Leading away from the body and ending at the main road, two hundred yards distant, were four lines of these same impressions, about three and a half feet apart in length and about fourteen inches in width. In some places, however, they were badly run together.
‘A stranger in our parts is quickly noted and investigation failed to reveal a recent one. There were absolutely no other clues and I could find no motive for the crime. It has me stumped, Professor,’ concluded Brown.
‘Give me a little time,’ said Fordney. ‘Perhaps I can help. I’ll call you at your hotel.’
An hour later, he said over the telephone, ‘Sheriff, look for a man who.... Such a person only could possibly have committed the murder.’
