"The rascal, the double-dyed rascal. But he needn't think he has beaten us. I'll run him to earth and he shall swing for this, or my name is not Leversidge."
"But you have got to catch him first," I said, "and from the sample he has already given us of his prowess I incline to the belief that he's as slippery a customer as ever wore shoe-leather."
"Nevertheless he shall hang, or I'll know the reason why."
"I think I can tell you the reason why," I said quietly. "He won't hang, because when everything is said and done it would be about the most inadvisable step you could take, in your own interests and those of your firm, to bring him before a court of Justice. You're not particularly anxious, I suppose, that the Government should become aware of your visit to this wreck?"
"Very naturally," he replied. "I have already told you that, I think."
"In that case how do you propose to show that you became aware of the fact that your man was murdered? and if you will excuse my saying so, I cannot help thinking that you will find it an extremely difficult, if not quite impossible, task to prove that our friend Colway-Brown was the man who committed this terrible crime."
"Not at all," he answered. "What about the razor? We know that it is his property, and if it was not with it that the murder was committed, how do you account for it being in his cabin?"
"I am not attempting to account for it at all," I answered. "I am simply endeavouring to show you how futile it would be in all probability to try to bring the crime home to the man whom we suspect."
"Then what do you propose doing?"
I thought for a few moments before I answered.