hoof—footprints which the Harborer of the Staghounds, a man who has grown gray on these moors, declares to have been the slot of an old stag."
Hugh Trenchard shook his head.
"I would only be too glad to accept that explanation if I could, Ronnie. But I know well enough that it was no stag that I encountered the night Marle was attacked."
"Then what on earth was it?"
"That's what I'm going to find out—and before long, too." Hugh started to his feet and began to pace the room restlessly. His lean jaws were tightly clenched and there was a light of battle in his eyes. "There must be some explanation—a natural and logical explanation that will fit the facts as we know them. The trouble is that I've grasped the tangled skein haphazard, and every attempt to straighten out the snarl only makes the confusion worse. Once the end of a thread is in my hands, the whole tangle may straighten out with one pull——"
"You remind me of my old granny soliloquizing over her knitting!" Ronnie interrupted flippantly. "What do you say to getting the car out and having a look at your new home? You may pick up a few clues, you know," he added with a grin.
Hugh needed no second invitation.
Ten minutes later he was seated in Ronnie's small but powerful car, being piloted through the winding lanes which led to the great uplands of the Moor. Each was busy with his own thoughts, and it was not until half the distance had been covered that Ronnie broke the silence.
"So you have really decided to take up your residence at Moor Lodge?"
Hugh glanced round in some surprize.
"Of course. What better center could I have for my investigations?"
"Ho, ho!—investigations?" His friend chuckled as he repeated the word with exaggerated dramatic emphasis. "That seems as if you're going into the detective business in real earnest. But surely you can't be thinking of living at that allforsaken place like Robinson Crusoe on his island?"
"Well, I had thought of asking you to act as my Man Friday for a bit, but it's not fair to make you neglect your practise."
Ronnie Brewster gave a somewhat rueful laugh.
"Up to the present my practise is still in the nebulous stage of development," he confessed. "If Moor Lodge were connected with the town by phone I would almost as easily make my calls from there. But it wouldn't be worth while to run a line out here——"
"Why not install a couple of wireless sets?" Hugh made the suggestion half in jest, but to his surprize Ronnie jumped at the idea.
"The very thing!" he exclaimed. "It ought not to be difficult to get a transmitting license, and then we could be in touch with each other even when I was not stopping at your place. And it would be very handy to be able to send out an S. O. S. if you happened to wake up in the night and find a gentleman with a cloven foot leaning over the bed-rail, asking you if it is to be roast or boiled."
Ronnie was on his favorite subject now, and he kept on in the same vein of half-cynical banter until they came in sight of the red-tiled gables and quaint, twisted chimneys of Moor Lodge softly outlined against the grayish-purple sweep of the distant hills.
"Creepy-looking shack, isn't it?" was his final comment as they alighted. "If
