"I did," was the calm reply. "Lowndes couldn't have used his pen like that to save his life. Don't excite yourself, young fellow. I make no secret that I was his accessory after the fact. I am going to confess that in open court, and I don't much care what they do with me--so long as they hang the dog who refused to give me a sixpence this evening." He glared horribly out of his now bloodshot eyes, and took snuff with a truculent snap of his filthy fingers. "So that's what brings you to me?" said Harry Ringrose. "You would have done better to take your confession straight to the police; but since you are here you had better go on if you want to convince me. You say my father went overboard in mid-Channel. How was it he was afterwards seen in Dieppe?" Scrafton leant forward with his demon's grin. "He wasn't," said he. "_I_ was seen in his ulster, with his comforter round my beard, and his travelling cap over my eyes. It was I who walked into thin air, as the papers said, from the _café_ in Dieppe. And it was in the _café_ the second page of the letter was written, as you see it now. As your father wrote it, the letter finished on the fourth page, the two in between being left blank. I finished it on the second page, and then tore off the fourth. I have it here." And he produced the greasy pocket-book which he had used as a score-book in Bushey Park. "Let me see it," whispered Harry. "Will you give me your word to return it instantly?" "My word of honour." The page of writing that was now put into Harry's trembling hands is printed underneath the genuine beginning of his father's letter, and above the forgery. "S.S. _Seine_, "Easter Morning, "188-- "My dearest Wife, "Half frantic with remorse, degradation, sorrow, and shame, I sit down to write you the last letter you may ever receive from your unhappy husband. "When I said good-bye to you this morning I could not tell you that it might be good-bye for ever. I told you I was going up to town on business. How could I tell you that the business was to take my passage for the Continent? Yet it was nothing else, and I write this midway between Newhaven and Dieppe, where I shall post it. "My wife, I could not bear to give back the ten thousand pounds that was only half enough to save us. I am going where I hope to (genuine) double it in a night. A man is going with me who has an infallible system; also another man who swears by the first man, and whom I myself can trust. I know that it is a mad as well as a wicked thing to do. I am going to gamble with other men's money--to play for my home and for my life. Yes; if I lose, my end will be the end of many another dishonest fool at Monte Carlo. You will never see me again.