Solution—The Professor Deduces

From the faint, incomplete shoeless right foot impressions in the murder room, the Professor deduced (and correctly) that they were made by a man wearing cheap blue socks, the right one sufficiently wet for the cheap dye to run. As the blue was deeper in the center he reasoned that the man had a hole in his right shoe which accounted for the wetness of the right sock. As there were no impressions of a left foot, Fordney deduced that the left sock had not become wet, therefore, that there was no hole in the left shoe. Although he could not definitely determine the sex of the tiptoeing murderer from the incomplete footprints he was reasonably sure the killer was a man, both from the nature of the crime and the fact that women’s blue hose are not common. The killer was caught in less than three hours. He sits in the death house at this moment vainly trying to cover his fear of that last summons.

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DISCERNMENT IS A POWER OF THE UNDERSTANDING IN WHICH FEW EXCEL.

—Oreville