Page:The Viaduct Murder (1926).pdf/162

"Tapping? Measuring?" protested Gordon. "Don't you believe it; it was Reeves singing. I always said the man would beat it if we let Reeves go on like that. I'd have done the same myself."

"I'm not at all sure," said Reeves, "that he may not have found the chewing-gum on his trousers, and formed his own conclusions that way. However, there isn't very much harm done. The police have got their man, with no great inconvenience to anybody except that poor old collie at Weighford. Rather a fine dog it was, and the owner wasn't a bit nice about it when I saw him."

"I suppose," Carmichael asked, "that the police can actually prove Davenant was the murderer?"

"Not a bit of it," said Reeves confidently, "unless they've got more up their sleeve than I think they have."

"But surely," urged Gordon, "if he went to all the trouble of hiding himself like a rat in the wainscoting⁠———"

"That's all very well, but they haven't even proved Davenant was the man in the passage. You see, Davenant was travelling on that train, but it's the train he always does come up by every Saturday. He might say that he hadn't had time to get his ticket; that he had come all the way from London; that the real murderer must have slipped out on to the six-foot way and lost himself on the opposite platform. I don't know that he will say that; of course, he is reserving his defence. But even if they can bring people to prove⁠—people who