A key grated in the kitchen lock, and it sounded through the vast empty house with a peculiarly sinister harshness. It was a situation certainly unique in crime! The stairs creaked--there was the sound of heavy, laboured breathing. But there was but one set of footfalls! We heard the door open to the room where the ugly blackjack hung, and as it did Leslie swung our door out and, silently as so many black ghosts, we moved to the other door. Against the window we could see a man’s form dimly outlined. And then-- There was a flash of blinding brilliance, a report that crashed in the empty stillness of the abandoned mansion with the reverberation of a twelve-pound gun, and under the arcs of the swiftly flashing pocket lights of Brady and Leslie, we beheld, stretched almost at our feet as the form toppled backward and stiffened out-- _Waters!_ There was a gushing wound in the temple. Death had been instantaneous. With an eagerness that was more animal than human, Lanagan tore back Waters’ coat, ran his hands swiftly through his every pocket, and finally, with a “_Ha!_” of satisfaction like a snarl, pulled out from an unsealed envelope in an inside pocket a page of writing: “Daffy, chief: Daffy, as a horned toad? Well, here’s the proof!” Written in the hand and phraseology of a fairly intelligent man, it was as follows: “_I killed Ratto. I guess I have been crazy. I went crazy looking for murdered people in vacant houses from telegraph poles. I couldn’t find any more, and then I thought I would kill somebody. I told Ratto on the street that I had seen a man’s body in that house and he went in with me. I had never seen him before. I had left the door open as I ran out to him, but he didn’t suspect anything. I killed him with a blackjack and then found the body in three days, from the telegraph pole. I had picked out the place several days ahead. I got everything ready and came up several times and it was funny no one saw me. I thought Ratto would say get the police but he was nervy all right and jumped right in after me._ ”_The room in this house I discovered in the same way. It was even better than the flat where Ratto was killed because the neighbourhood didn’t have so many people. The blackjack is on the door knob. I put it there so as I went into the room first to light a match I could take it off the inside door knob and hit my man as he followed me in._ “_That reporter Lanagan and another man were hanging around this neighbourhood to-day. He has been talking to me kind of suspicious lately and I guess the jig is up. It’s funny the police never suspected me._ ”_I guess I have been crazy all right. I would hang anyhow. But I am all right now and I will kill myself in the room. It’s all the return I can make for Ratto. If nobody hears the shot I hope somebody finds me from a telegraph pole. It will give the newspapers lots to write about. That’s what made me crazy. I got too much fame, I guess._