The very words of Sergeant Cuff recurred
to me, as if the man himself was at my side again, pointing to the
unanswerable inference which he drew from the smear on the door.
"Find out whether there is any article of dress in this house with the
stain of paint on it. Find out who that dress belongs to. Find out how
the person can account for having been in the room, and smeared the
paint between midnight and three in the morning. If the person can't
satisfy you, you haven't far to look for the hand that took the
Diamond."
One after another those words travelled over my memory, repeating
themselves again and again with a wearisome, mechanical reiteration.
I was roused from what felt like a trance of many hours--from what was
really, no doubt, the pause of a few moments only--by a voice calling
to me. I looked up, and saw that Betteredge's patience had failed him at
last. He was just visible between the sandhills, returning to the beach.
The old man's appearance recalled me, the moment I perceived it, to my
sense of present things, and reminded me that the inquiry which I had
pursued thus far still remained incomplete. I had discovered the smear
on the nightgown.
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