Then he smiled, took his departure, and went presumably to meet Mr. Narkom.
Yet had the occupants of the house he had left been watching his movements they would have been surprised to see that his footsteps led him exactly in the opposite direction from that of the village police station. He simply vanished round the angle of the house and stood on the gravelled path, apparently absorbed in looking at the gnarled old wistaria plant which covered the entire wall. His memory for rooms had told him that that small tightly closed window was that of the surgery in which he had made so momentous a discovery. The garden all round him, shut off from the main road by a fairly high wall and shielded by tall elm trees, was a veritable paradise of flowers.
Flowers had always been a passion with Cleek himself, and for a few moments he stood there drinking in the exquisite perfume of the hyacinths which hung round him like a cloud of sweetest scent. Blue, pink and purest white, with tulips and all the various kinds of narcissi grouped about them they transformed the place into a fairy glen. Looking about him Cleek recognized what constant care and attention had been expended upon the spot. It was a harmless hobby and possibly a paying one in a small way, but not sufficient to pay Master Bobby's racing debts. Cleek's brows drew together involuntarily. Again he saw the flush of pain, and if he were not mistaken of remorse too, in Jennifer Wynne's face.
His eyes wandered mechanically from bed to bed, coming to rest on the one just beneath the window.
Yes, there was undoubtedly a footprint, long and narrow, a woman's footprint obviously, clearly marked and only partially concealed by the tulip leaves. His eyes flashed up to the ivy which stretched green and unbroken to the surgery window. Unbroken? No, it certainly was not, for closer observation revealed the fact that many of the branches were torn and bruised. Someone light and lithe had evidently climbed up and thus obtained an entry to the surgery. _But who?_
Cleek stood there, his brows pulled down, his chin pinched hard as he thought of the prussic acid and other things. It could not be Jennifer Wynne herself, for obviously she would not have entered the room from the outside, nor young Wynne, either. Who was it?