"Well, I'm damned!" broke in Alf Pond, with intense earnestness.
"So you see, I had quite a lot to help me. I was searching for a well-dressed man----"
"But how did you know he was well-dressed?" queried Mr. Doulton.
"His footprints showed that he wore boots of a fashionable model," explained Malcolm Sage. "He also carried an umbrella, even on an occasion such as this.
"I had to look for a well-dressed man who always carried an umbrella, and who smoked large and expensive cigars and, most important of all, whose nose had been smashed out of all recognition."
"But how could you tell I got him on the nose?" demanded Burns, leaning forward eagerly.
"There was quite a pool of blood beneath the hedge," explained Malcolm Sage. "He was probably there for some minutes while his friends were making sure of you, Burns. Blood would not have flowed so generously as a result of a blow from the fist except from the nose."
"You're a knock-out, that's what you are, Mr. Sage," said Alf Pond, with admiring conviction. "_I'd_ never have thought of it all," he added, with the air of one desiring to be absolutely fair.
"Finally," continued Malcolm Sage, "there was the car. It was a large car, a defect in one of the tyres enabled me to determine that by a steel rule. It was obviously heavily laden and the near back-wheel was out of track. This fact, of course, was of no help on the high-road, where other cars would blot out the track; but if I could show that someone who had been heavily backing Jefferson had a nose badly damaged, and a car with a near back-wheel out of track in just the same way that this particular wheel was out of track, and that its tyres were the same as those of the car that drew up outside Burns's training-quarters, then I should have a wealth of circumstantial evidence that it would be almost impossible to confute.
"From a friend at Scotland Yard I obtained the number of the car belonging to the man whom this evidence involved.
"As Stainton is off the Portsmouth Road, I telephoned to the Automobile Association patrols at Putney Hill, Esher, and Clandon Cross Roads. I was told that on the previous evening this particular car was seen going in the direction of Guildford. These patrols take the numbers of all cars that pass. As it had not passed Liss, where the next patrol is stationed, it was another link in the chain."