"I inquired at the cloak-room. Yes, the carpenter's bass was there, beneath a dusty heap of other unclaimed luggage. There was demurrage to pay on it, which I offered promptly to hand over, but as I could produce no counterfoil bearing the name of Hopkins, the clerk, with a smile, said that he could not let me have it. However, when he heard what I wanted, he made no objection to my having an overhaul.
"The two lugs of the bass were threaded together with a hammer. I took this away, and opened the sides. Within was a ball of marline, another of spun-yarn, a grease-pot, and several large iron eyes. Also a large marline-spike. It was this last that fixed my attention. It was brand new, with a bone handle and a bright brass ferrule. Most of the iron also was bright, but three inches of the point were stained with a faint dark brown. From a casual inspection I should have put this down to the marline-spike having been last used to make a splice on tarred rope; but now my suspicions made me think of something else.
"I raised the stained point to my nose. There was no smell of tar whatever. On the bright part there was the indefinable odour of iron; at the tip, that thin coat of dark brown varnish had blotted this scent completely away.
"I think my fingers trembled when I turned to the bass again.
"Yes, there, opposite to where the point of the marline-spike had been lying—it was tilted up over the ball of spun-yarn—was a closed-up gash in the side of the bass. The spike had passed through there, and then been withdrawn. Round the gash was a dim discoloration which I knew to be dried human blood.
"In my mind's eye I saw the whole ghastly accident clearly enough now. The two men had been standing up, struggling. Guide had gone down under a blow, knocked senseless, and Walker had stumbled over him. Pitching forward, face downwards, on to the seat before he could recover, his head had dashed violently against the carpenter's bass. The sharp marline-spike inside, with its heel resting against the solid wall of the carriage, had entered the top of his skull like a bayonet. No human hand had been raised against him, and yet he had been killed.
"I kept my own particular ramblings in this case remarkably quiet, and in court led up to my facts through ordinary cross-examination.
"At the proper psychological moment I called attention to the shape of the puncture in Walker's skull, and then dramatically sprang the bass and the marline-spike upon them unawares. After that, as the papers put it, 'there was applause in court, which was instantly suppressed.'"
"Oh, the conceit of the man," said O'Malley, laughing.
Grayson laughed too. "Well," he said, "I was younger then, and I suppose I was a trifle conceited. The Crown didn't throw up. But the jury chucked us a 'Not guilty' without leaving the box, and then leading counsel for the other side came across and congratulated me on having saved Guide from the gallows. 'Now I'd have bet anything on hanging that man,' said he."