The Ashiel Mystery

While he sat there a breeze got up and ruffled the loch; the ripples danced and sparkled like a cinematograph, and waves threw themselves among the rocks with loud gurglings and splashings. The air was suddenly full of the noise and hurry of the waters. He got up and went to the end of the peninsula. In spite of the dancing light upon the surface and the merry sounds of the ripples, the water, he could see, was deep and dark; a little way out a pale smooth stone rose a few feet above the level of it, its top draped in a velvet green shawl of moss. A fat sea-gull sat there; nor did it move when he appeared.

A little bay ran in between the rocks, its shore spread with grey sand, smooth and trackless. At least so Gimblet imagined it at first, as his eye roved casually over the beach. Then suddenly, with a smothered ejaculation, he leaped down from his perch of observation, and made his way to the margin of the water.

There, scored in the sand, was a deep furrow, reaching to within a foot of the waves, where it stopped as if it had been wiped out from a slate with a damp sponge. Gimblet had no doubt what it was. A boat had been beached here, and that lately. A glance at the stones surrounding the bay showed him that the water was falling, for in quiet little pools, within the outer breakwater of rocks, a damp line showed on the granite a full quarter of an inch above the water. By a rapid calculation of the time it would take for that watermark to dry, the detective was able to form some idea of the rate at which the loch was falling, and he thought he could judge the slope of the beach sufficiently well to calculate about how long it was since the track in the sand had reached to the brink of the waves.

It was a rough guess, but, if he were right, then a boat had landed in that bay some forty-two hours ago. But there were other traces, besides, the tracks of him who had brought the boat ashore. From where Gimblet stood, a double row of footprints, going and returning, showed plainly between the water and the stones to which the sand quickly gave place. They were the tracks left by large boots with singularly pointed toes, and with no nails on the soles. Emphatically not boots such as any of the men of those parts would be likely to wear.

Gimblet bent over the sand.