AMBUSHED

“We’d better walk here on the side, John,” Fordney said as they started along the only path to the woods.

Trudging along, John said, “As I told you, Professor, Crane left the lodge to go hunting. About ten minutes later, I heard a shot and a scream. I ran down the path and found him about five hundred yards from the house, bleeding terribly from a wound in the head. I dashed back for the first-aid kit and bandaged him as best I could, but he died before I finished. Then I went back to the lodge and phoned you.”

Reaching the spot where Crane lay, he explained, “I turned him over so that I could dress his head.”

“He must have been shot from ambush, as there are no other footprints about but those in the path, three sets of which are yours, the other Crane’s,” the Professor said after a careful examination.

Walking into the underbrush, he exclaimed, “The murderer must have stood near here. See those powder marks on the leaves of this branch?”

While cutting off the branch Fordney gashed his hand. “Better sterilize that,” John suggested.

Back at the lodge, Fordney was about to pick up a bottle of Zonite from the kit John had used when he observed a dark brown spot on the label. Walking to the basin, he looked in the mirror above it, and saw John furtively slip a pair of scissors into the kit.

Turning around slowly, he said, “I’m going to hold you on suspicion of murder!”

Why? Turn page for solution.