“He must be a Samson,” said Mark.  “Consider if you or I had to pull a solid, eleven-stone man in a sack up here.”

“I could not,” admitted the inspector.  “But it was done.  We’re going to have a repetition of that job at Berry Head in the summer.  We shall hunt the cliffs, like a pack of hounds, and presently find some place hanging over deep water.  Then we shall hit on a sack in a rabbit hole or badger’s earth—­and that will be all there is to it.”

On the plateau they rested, while Brendon found some clear marks of feet—­a heavy, iron-shod boot, which he recognized.  They occurred in a soft place just outside the mouth of the tunnel and he recollected the toe plates and the triangle-headed nails that held them.

He called Inspector Damarell.

“When this is compared with the plaster casts taken at Foggintor, you’ll find it’s the same boot,” he said.  “That’s no surprise, of course, but it proves probably that we are dealing with the same man.”

“And he’ll use the same means to vanish into thin air that he did six months ago,” prophesied the other.  “You mark me, Brendon, this is not one man’s work.  There’s a lot hid under this job that hasn’t seen light—­just as there was under the last.  It’s very easy to say, because we can’t find a motive, the man’s mad.  That’s the line of least resistance; but it don’t follow by a long sight that it’s the right line.  Here’s a chap has lured his brother to death, and very cunning he’s been about it.  He’s pitched a yarn and then, after a promise to turn up, he changes his mind and makes a new plan altogether by which old Ben Redmayne is put entirely in his power.  Then—­”

“But who was to know he meant mischief?  We had facts to deal with.  Mrs. Pendean herself had seen and spoken to him; so had Doria.  In the case of the lady, at any rate, all she said was above suspicion.  She hid nothing; she behaved like a Christian woman, wept at the spectacle of his awful misery, and brought his message to his brother.  Then sudden, panic fear overtook the man at the last moment—­natural enough—­and he begged Bendigo Redmayne to see him in his hiding-place alone.  It rang true as a bell.  For myself I had not a shadow of suspicion.”

“That’s all right,” admitted Damarell, “and I’m not one who pretends to be wise after the event.  But, as I told you before, I thought it a mistake to suspend our search and take the matter out of professional hands just when we were safe to nab him.  You were in command and we obeyed, but whatever the murderer had to say would as well have been said to us as to his brother—­and better; because in any case he might have tempted a brother to break the law for him.  Now there’s more innocent blood been shed and a damned, dangerous criminal—­mad or sane—­is still at large.  Most likely more than one.  However, it is not much use jawing, I grant you.  What we’ve got to do is to catch them—­if we can.”