"You are certain?"
"Absolutely. I saw his heels close up. They were aiming for my face every two seconds."
"Perhaps we should erase those prints," Smith suggested.
"Why?"
"Occam's razor. Pare away the extraneous facts in order to see the problem more clearly."
Remo fetched a broom from the kitchen. He swept the chauffeur's footprints clean. He was feeling more limber. He was also preoccupied with this latest mystery and wanted to solve it more than he cared for the racking pain in his muscles.
"Now, these are Chiun's sandal prints," he said when he was done. "See? They leave, but don't return."
"Erase them."
That finished, Remo said, "I think these are the Chinese student's tracks."
"Are you sure?"
"He was wearing sneakers. These are the only sneaker tracks."
"Do it."
Remo scoured those prints away, careful not to obscure any remaining footprints.
"Now we have two sets of tracks left," he said confidently.
"The tall man in the fur hat," Smith offered.
"That's what I say. He goes in and he comes out, right?"
"Obviously."
"But look," Remo said, kneeling beside one set of prints. "These are stamped over the other set, so they were made last. Right?"
"Obviously."
"He was in the house when I arrived; therefore, he had to be the first one to go in-before me, before the chauffeur, but after Chiun and Zingzong left."
"I see what you are getting at," Smith said, his face tightening.
"The footprints going into the house were made after the ones going out."
"That's impossible," Smith snapped. "He had to enter the house before he could exit it."
"That's usually the way it works, yeah," Remo admitted.
"Perhaps there are prints in back, or he entered through a window."
"That's what I wondered back at the safe house, where he left only one set of prints, but no go."
"We cannot eliminate any possibility without verifying it ourselves."
"Let's go."
But there were no footprints in the rear of the house-unless bird tracks counted-and there were none near the back door, which was partially blocked by a steep drift.
They returned to the front of the house in dejected silence.
Standing over the confusion of footprints, they stared at them in a lengthening silence as the brittle wind blew snow off nearby roofs.
"You say there was only one set at the safe house?" Smith ventured.
"Yes," Remo said distantly, still looking down at the snow. "Going in. Not coming out. They had to belong to the tall guy in the fur hat. I saw him enter the limo."
"What did he look like?"
"I only caught a glimpse. He kept to the shadows. But I'm sure he was the guy in purple I caught rifling Chiun's trunk."
"How could there be only one set going in if he had come out?"
Remo gave Smith a frank look. "That's what I want you to explain."
"I cannot," Smith admitted. "In fact, I fail to understand how there would be only one set of his prints, no matter in which direction they ran."
"That part I can explain," Remo said. "He must have gone in before yesterday's snowstorm. They got covered up."
"But you claim the tracks going in were visible after the storm."
"During it, actually. It had to be the other set that was covered up."
"Which would have been the tracks leaving the car. But you saw this man enter the limousine during the storm. What you describe, Remo, is a physical impossibility."
"So are these," Remo pointed out in a dull voice. "The freshest tracks lead into the house, but he's not in there."
They regarded the tracks in another pained silence.
"I cannot explain it," Smith said at last.
"Well, here's another one for you," Remo put in. "When I entered the house, I didn't sense him until he spoke. It was as if he had no heartbeat, no respiration, no physical presence. But I could see him."
"You are not claiming to have seen a ghost?" Smith wondered.
"I'm not claiming anything," Remo said quietly. "But you see the same tracks in the snow I do." "I give up," Smith said. He started off to his car.
"Where are you going?" Remo asked, following.