Page:The Viaduct Murder (1926).pdf/206

I mean. It would have to be⁠—well, I'm blessed!"

And in another moment Reeves was scrambling down the bank, precipitous as it was, to a clump of rank grass some ten feet below. Half-hidden in this he had seen, and now painfully secured, a large knotted stick such as may be carried by a peaceable man, but undoubtedly would come in useful in a scrap. It might be coincidence of course, but that seemed too good to be true. And yet, was it not also too good to be true that he, nearly a week after the event, should be holding between his hands the very weapon, undiscovered hitherto, which had begun the assault? There was no name on it. There was no blood on it, nor any mark of violence. And yet it could undoubtedly have given a stunning blow without breaking or showing signs of the contact.

The next point was to get his treasure home, and this was not so easy as it sounds. He did not dare to carry it openly with him to the dormy-house; if the murderer really lived there he might easily catch sight of the stick and take the alarm. To carry a stick up your trousers-leg makes you a marked man at once. He left it concealed in the bushes a little way from the dormy-house, and went to fetch his golf-bag, in which he bestowed it upside down, and so smuggled it unobserved to his room.

Gordon and Carmichael were properly thrilled by the discovery, but were not very helpful in making suggestions for its use. Carmichael said that he might take the stick to Brotherhood's grave and