Like the least intelligent of detectives I went on blindly over the traces of footprints which told me just no more than they could.
"I came to the conclusion that I was a fool, lower in the scale of intelligence than even the police of the modern romancer.

Novelists build mountains of stupidity out of a footprint on the sand, or from an impression of a hand on the wall.

That's the way innocent men are brought to prison.

It might convince an examining magistrate or the head of a detective department, but it's not proof.

You writers forget that what the senses furnish is not proof.