"I picked up the coat, put it on, and felt in its pockets. They were empty, but for a railway ticket. I picked up the hat, and smiled to find that it fitted me. Lastly I stopped, lifted the dog's corpse and flung it over to follow its master. All accounts thus closed, I stepped out for the station and caught the last train for Charing Cross. "You know the rest. "I borrowed your clothes, yesterday, and went down to the inquest. They admitted me to see the body, on my pretence that I had missed a relative and might be able to identify it. Farrell had gone back to his old features; death had made up its mind to hide the secret after all. . . . I am afraid that, having overtaxed my strength, I broke down on the revulsion, and may have given myself away. "But it doesn't matter. That dog has done for me. Your Dr. Tredgold is a good fellow and has nursed me very prettily back from starvation. But I happen, as you know, to have studied canine virus with some attention, and I have an objection to rivalling some effects of it that I have witnessed. Before you receive this, I shall be dead. I shall not trouble your hospitable roof, and I am sorry to trouble Jephson. But the searchers may find my body in Bushey Park. "So long!--and, on the whole, so best. . . . I find, having lost Farrell, that _I cannot do without him_. "You have been endlessly good to me. Remember me as I was once on a time, and so I shall always be--Yours," "Jack." That is the end of the tale [concluded Otway], except for this-- Twelve months later, being on leave and wanting to clear up the mystery of the newspaper report, I took a train down to C--, past Gravesend, made inquiries of the police, and finally hunted up the juryman who had shown so much emotion at the inquest. I found a little whiskered grocer, weighing out margarine in a shed that was half shop, half canteen. All I extracted from him was this-- "Yes, to be sure, sir, I remember it perfectly. I only wish I didn't: for I dream of it at night: and, being a widower, I can't confide the trouble. The fact is, I must suffer from nerves and-- what do they call 'em, sir?--hallucinations--yes, that's the word. But I was fresh from inspecting the body, and when that person broke in, wearing a face like the corpse's twin-brother, well, it knocked me clean out. Of course, it must have been a hallucination; none of the others saw the least resemblance--as they've told me since. But at the moment, I'd have wagered my life. . . ." EPILOGUE. "Yes, that is the story," said Otway, sorting back the documents into his dispatch-case. "Is it quite all the story, sir?" asked Polkinghorne, breaking the silence that followed its close.