where you tread. Somebody has upset a pot of paint on the floor."
Riglett, walking delicately through dry places, extracted his bicycle from the rack, and presently departed to gladden the heart of his aunt, leaving Mr. Downing, his brain fizzing with the enthusiasm of the detective, to lock the door and resume his perambulation of the cricket field.
Give Dr. Watson a fair start, and he is a demon at the game. Mr. Downing's brain was now working with a rapidity and clearness which a professional sleuth might have envied.
Paint. Red paint. Obviously the same paint with which Sammy had been decorated. A footmark. Whose foot-mark? Plainly that of the criminal who had done the deed of decoration.
Yoicks!
There were two things, however, to be considered. Your careful detective must consider everything. In the first place, the paint might have been upset by the ground-man. It was the ground-man's paint. He had been giving a fresh coating to the wood-work in front of the pavilion scoring-box at the conclusion of yesterday's match. (A labour of love which was the direct outcome of the enthusiasm for work which Adair had instilled into him.) In that case the foot-mark might be his.
Note one: Interview the ground-man on this point.
In the second place Adair might have upset the tin and trodden in its contents when he went to get his bicycle in order to fetch the doctor for the suffering MacPhee. This was the more probable of the two contingencies, for it would have been dark in the shed when Adair went into it.
Note two: Interview Adair as to whether he found, on returning to the house, that there was paint on his boots.
Things were moving.
He resolved to take Adair first. He could get the ground-man's address from him.
