lot had evidently been used as an unlicensed dumping ground for
some time, for all sorts of odds and ends, old boots, bits of
stuff, silk and rags, broken bottles and empty tin cans, lay about
between the bushes or half buried in the earth. What had once
been an orderly garden was now an untidy receptacle for waste.
The pedantically neat detective looked about him in disgust, then
suddenly he forgot his displeasure and a gleam shot up in his eye.
It was very little, the thing this man had seen, this man who saw
so much more than others.

About ten paces from where he stood a high wooden fence hemmed in
the lot. The fence belonged to the neighbouring property, as the
lot in which he stood was not protected in any way. To the back
it was closed off by a corn field where the tall stalks rustled
gently in the faint morning breeze. All this could be seen by
anybody and Muller had seen it all at his first glance. But now
he had seen something else. Something that excited him because
it might possibly have some connection with the newly discovered
crime. His keen eyes, in glancing along the wooden fence at his
right hand, had caught sight of a little twig which had worked its
way through the fence. This twig belonged to a willow tree which
grew on the other side, and which spread its grey-green foliage
over the fence or through its wide openings. One of the little
twigs which had crept in between the planks was broken, and it
had been broken very recently, for the leaves were still fresh
and the sap was oozing from the crushed stem. Muller walked over
to the fence and examined the twig carefully. He soon saw how
it came to be broken. The broken part was about the height of a
man's knee from the ground. And just at this height there was
quite a space between two of the planks of the fence, heavy