When I arrived at Sunset Towers all was deathly still. There was no trace of the Captain upstairs or downstairs. For a while I thought my pilgrimage had been in vain. Then I remembered the secret chamber, and knew at once that, of course, the Captain would have taken refuge there. With my stiletto I had little difficulty in finding and penetrating the hole through the worm-eaten panel in the old oak wardrobe. I pressed back the lever which lifted the bar, and the door swung easily open. I listened for a moment wondering whether I had been overheard; if so the Captain might be waiting for me at the top of the narrow stairs. But all was still, and I ascended into the dark. I hesitated at the top, then boldly pushed open the door. The Captain lay on the bed, his face turned to the skylight, his hand gripping a dagger which was buried up to the hilt in his heart. There was little to do. He had paid the forfeit, and was at rest. When I recovered from the shock I searched among his papers. I found a copy of his will bequeathing his property to Jenny and myself, with the hope strongly expressed that, some day, we might marry each other, and so reunite the divided inheritance. I knew his real meaning was that the feud might be healed in reconciliation. I put the will into my pocket, but vowed never to touch a penny of that unhallowed gold. I hoped, too, I might persuade Jenny to forswear her share. That would be the last service I could do her, for I couldn't see the Captain's desire being fulfilled. Then there seemed only one thing left to do. I searched the cellars and grounds for oil and firewood, and stacking the fuel up the stairs, and flinging open all the doors and windows, I set a light to the stuff, using as a brand first the manuscript that had caused all the evil, and then the paper I had found on the skeleton in Drift-Wood Cavern. With the building once well ablaze I set off for the sea, turning at every few steps to look behind me to satisfy myself that the flames were mastering the great ruinous pile, wiping bare for ever all traces of the crime which had begun there with the finding of the manuscript and ended there with the suicide of the Captain. As I left the place farther and farther behind I couldn't help thinking of that other fire I had watched as my father carried me away from the blazing hut in the woods where first I had consciously become aware of the tangled net in which my life had been so strangely and tragically involved. And here with fire I was freeing myself from the net for ever. And so I kept casting back over my shoulder to watch the flames, till at last even the smoke rising in a thick column to the clouds was merely a patch of blurred shadow on the skyline.