"Let me be arrested and hanged. I don't want to be tortured," wailed the man on the floor. "Did you kill my mother?" "Give me some wine and I'll tell you." "I shan't," said Harry; then thought better of it, and poured a glass of port down his enemy's throat. "Now tell!" "I really didn't mean to kill her," said Theodore, and Colpster raised his head to listen. "I followed Martha up to London, intending when she got the Mikado Jewel to make her give it to me." "Why?" asked the Squire, looking very old and grey. "Because you said that the one who produced the jewel would be your heir, curse you!" shrieked Theodore savagely; "You are the cause of all the beastly trouble. I learned from Martha in an indirect way that Harry was coming, and then I met him." "Yes," said the sailor bitterly. "And like a fool I told you too much." "You told me nothing," said Dane, scowling. "Your mother wanted the emerald for Basil. But I got into your room at the boarding-house you lived in at Pimlico, and I read your mother's letters." "You did." "Yes. She said that she would be alone on that night and would come to get the emerald. I went to the house to see if she had left. I knocked at the door, but no one came, so I went to the window and saw her lying on the sofa near the fire. I called out to her, and asked her to let me in." "She couldn't get off the sofa, you fool!" cried the Squire. "She could and she did. I said that I had found out that Harry had been killed by the Japanese for the sake of the emerald. Then she crawled to the window and let me in." "You beast!" said Pentreddle, gritting his teeth. "You told a lie." "Martha would not have admitted me if I had not done so. She got me into the room, and then I insisted that she should give the emerald." "She hadn't got it." "She wouldn't confess that she hadn't. Perhaps she feared lest I should intercept her messenger, Miss Carrol, on the way home, and rob her of the jewel. At all events, she gave me to understand nothing, and I really believed that the emerald was in her pocket. I tried to get it; then she brought out that damned stiletto and stabbed at me. I wrested it from her and in the struggle somehow I drove it into her throat." "You intended to!" shouted the Squire, rising to shake his two clenched hands over the criminal. "I swear I did not," panted Dane; "it was really an accident. When I saw what I had done I grew afraid. I thought that I heard someone outside----" "So you did," interrupted Harry sharply; "It was the watching priest." "If I'd known," Theodore scowled, and his eyes gleamed in a most murderous manner. "But I didn't. I saw that Martha was dead or dying, and opened the window to throw the stiletto into the area. Then I searched her clothing for the emerald and afterwards the bedrooms." "Oh! And you say you did not murder her?" raged the Squire.