“I won’t ask you, Mr. Barnes,” he said, “whether you know anything about what has happened here.  You are not bound to say.  I hope you don’t know, and that you will be able to prove it.  But I must go through the form of arresting you in the King’s name for the murder of Colonel Norman Bohun.”

“You are not bound to say anything,” said the cobbler in officious excitement.  “They’ve got to prove everything.  They haven’t proved yet that it is Colonel Bohun, with the head all smashed up like that.”

“That won’t wash,” said the doctor aside to the priest.  “That’s out of the detective stories.  I was the colonel’s medical man, and I knew his body better than he did.  He had very fine hands, but quite peculiar ones.  The second and third fingers were the same length.  Oh, that’s the colonel right enough.”

As he glanced at the brained corpse upon the ground the iron eyes of the motionless blacksmith followed them and rested there also.

“Is Colonel Bohun dead?” said the smith quite calmly.  “Then he’s damned.”

“Don’t say anything!  Oh, don’t say anything,” cried the atheist cobbler, dancing about in an ecstasy of admiration of the English legal system.  For no man is such a legalist as the good Secularist.

The blacksmith turned on him over his shoulder the august face of a fanatic.

“It’s well for you infidels to dodge like foxes because the world’s law favours you,” he said; “but God guards His own in His pocket, as you shall see this day.”

Then he pointed to the colonel and said:  “When did this dog die in his sins?”

“Moderate your language,” said the doctor.

“Moderate the Bible’s language, and I’ll moderate mine.  When did he die?”

“I saw him alive at six o’clock this morning,” stammered Wilfred Bohun.

“God is good,” said the smith.  “Mr. Inspector, I have not the slightest objection to being arrested.  It is you who may object to arresting me.  I don’t mind leaving the court without a stain on my character.  You do mind perhaps leaving the court with a bad set-back in your career.”

The solid inspector for the first time looked at the blacksmith with a lively eye; as did everybody else, except the short, strange priest, who was still looking down at the little hammer that had dealt the dreadful blow.

“There are two men standing outside this shop,” went on the blacksmith with ponderous lucidity, “good tradesmen in Greenford whom you all know, who will swear that they saw me from before midnight till daybreak and long after in the committee room of our Revival Mission, which sits all night, we save souls so fast.  In Greenford itself twenty people could swear to me for all that time.  If I were a heathen, Mr. Inspector, I would let you walk on to your downfall.  But as a Christian man I feel bound to give you your chance, and ask you whether you will hear my alibi now or in court.”