“Now see,” said Mr. Inspector, after mature deliberation: kneeling on one knee beside the body, when they had stood looking down on the drowned man, as he had many a time looked down on many another man: “the way of it was this. Of course you gentlemen hardly failed to observe that he was towing by the neck and arms.”

They had helped to release the rope, and of course not.

“And you will have observed before, and you will observe now, that this knot, which was drawn chock-tight round his neck by the strain of his own arms, is a slipknot”: holding it up for demonstration.

Plain enough.

“Likewise you will have observed how he had run the other end of this rope to his boat.”

It had the curves and indentations in it still, where it had been twined and bound.