"Right you are; and the blamed Santiago bungled the affair. If I had been on the spot--well that's all done with. About the will. Mrs. Marsh came and kicked up a row about the will in favour of her son saying the Colonel was going to alter it. She picked up something of that from me when I had a cargo aboard. But I never knew till after she came, how Carr was tricking me. When she went--and she did curse him--I had a row with Carr. He told me the kind of will he'd made. We had almost a stand up fight. He brought in the murder business about me as usual, and I knuckled under as usual. Then I went off to drink rum at the Carr Arms." "Yes, and to threaten the Colonel." "Oh! that wasn't on my own account. All I meant was that if I gave the tip to the Lima greasers, Carr would be knifed. That fool Napper thought I meant to do the job myself. Well sir I came back and lay down to sleep off the rum. Carr got his own dinner, and then dressed himself up as he always did. Blamed foolishness I always called it. Cooking your dinner and then wearing a starched shirt to eat it. Pah!" Frisco spat. "He wanted to keep his self-respect I suppose." "He had no occasion for an article of that sort Herrick. Self-respect and Carr!--well I should smile. However, I was asleep. When I was pulling round sober, and thinking of getting up to eat, I heard a shot. Oh! I am too used to the sound of shooting not to know it when I hear it. I wondered if Carr was in the shooting gallery. After a time--twenty minutes maybe I got up and went into the gallery. No one there. I went up to the tower after visiting the dining-room. I found the Colonel dead. I was in a fright I can tell you. In a flash I saw that my neck was in the rope. I had threatened the Colonel and they'd think I'd killed him. Also I was wanted in Frisco and South America and half a hundred places. My name would come out may-be (but I am not afraid of that now Herrick) and I would be turned off as sure as a gun. I went downstairs and drank some wine. In the house--and coming down from a room under the one in which Carr lay shot--I saw someone. As he came down the tower steps, it is my opinion he shot the Colonel. If it wasn't him I don't know who could have done it." "And who was it you say?" "Why! don't jump Herrick. It was Sidney Endicotte." Herrick stared. "That lad never killed the Colonel," he said. "Then who did?" asked Frisco impatiently, "that boy just hated Carr. I never could make out why, and he was half-witted besides. Then there was the pistol I read about in the papers. It is just the kind of weapon a boy of that sort might pick up cheap in a shop of sorts. A man like me would have used a Derringer. No, I'm sure that boy shot him. He came right upon me, as cool as you like and says, 'He's quite dead.'" "Did he say that?" I swear he did, "He's quite dead," says Sidney, "then before I could get my breath he went out into the night, and I lost him. "Why did you not follow?"