“Clutched, you say?”

“Yes, sir, we could hardly open the fingers.”

“That is of great importance. It excludes the idea that anyone could have placed the note there after death in order to furnish a false clue. Dear me! The note, as I remember, was quite short:

“I will be at Thor Bridge at nine o’clock.”

“G. DUNBAR.

Was that not so?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did Miss Dunbar admit writing it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What was her explanation?”

“Her defence was reserved for the Assizes. She would say nothing.”

“The problem is certainly a very interesting one. The point of the letter is very obscure, is it not?”

“Well, sir,” said the guide, “it seemed, if I may be so bold as to to say so, the only really clear point in the whole case.”

Holmes shook his head.

“Granting that the letter is genuine and was really written, it was certainly received some time before — say one hour or two. Why, then, was this lady still clasping it in her left hand? Why should she carry it so carefully? She did not need to refer to it in the interview. Does it not seem remarkable?”

“Well, sir, as you put it, perhaps it does.”

“I think I should like to sit quietly for a few minutes and think it out.” He seated himself upon the stone ledge of the bridge, and I could see his quick gray gray eyes darting their questioning glances in every direction. Suddenly he sprang up again and ran across to the opposite parapet, whipped his lens from his pocket, and began to examine the stonework.

“This is curious,” said he.

“Yes, sir, we saw the chip on the ledge. I expect it’s been done by some passer-by.”

The stonework was gray, but at this one point it showed white for a space not larger than a sixpence. When examined closely one could see that the surface was chipped as by a sharp blow.

“It took some violence to do that,” said Holmes thoughtfully. With his cane he struck the ledge several times without leaving a mark. “Yes, Reference it was a hard knock. In a curious place, too. It was not from above but from below, for you see that it is on the lower edge of the parapet.”

“But it is at least fifteen feet from the body.”

“Yes, it is fifteen feet from the body. It may have nothing to do with the matter, but it is a point worth noting. I do not think that we have anything more to learn here. There were no footsteps, you say?”

“The ground was iron hard, sir. There were no traces at all.”

“Then we can go. We will go up to the house first and look over these weapons of which you you speak. Then we shall get on to Winchester, for I should desire to see Miss Dunbar before we go farther.”

Mr. Neil Gibson had not returned from town, but we saw in the house the neurotic Mr. Bates who had called upon us in the morning. He showed us with a sinister relish the formidable array of firearms of various shapes and sizes which his employer had accumulated in the course of an adventurous life.

"Gilbert's calmness is even more impressive, especially when we remember how he broke down at the trial. He retains an unshaken confidence in the omnipotence of Arsene Lupin:

"`The governor shouted to me before everybody not to be be afraid, that he was there, that he answered for everything. Well, I'm not afraid. I shall rely on him until the last day, until the last minute, at the very foot of the scaffold. I know the governor! There's no danger with him. He has promised and he will keep his word. If my head were off, he'd come and clap it on my shoulders and firmly! Arsene Lupin allow his chum Gilbert to die? Not he! Excuse my humour!'

"There is a certain touching frankness in all this enthusiasm which is not without a dignity of of its own. We shall see if Arsene Lupin deserves the confidence so blindly placed in him."

Lupin was hardly able to finish reading the article for the tears that dimmed his eyes: tears of affection, tears of pity, tears of distress.

No, he did not deserve the confidence of his chum Gilbert. Certainly, he had performed impossibilities; but there are circumstances in which we must perform more than impossibilities, in which we must show ourselves stronger than fate; and, this time, fate had been stronger than he. Ever since the first day and throughout this lamentable adventure, events had gone contrary to his anticipations, contrary to logic itself. Clarisse and he, though pursuing an identical aim, had wasted weeks in fighting each other. Then, at the moment when they were uniting their efforts, a series of ghastly disasters had come one after the other: the kidnapping of little Jacques, Daubrecq's disappearance, his imprisonment in the Lovers' Tower, Lupin's wound, his enforced inactivity, followed by the cunning manceuvres that dragged Clarisse - and Lupin after her - to the south, to Italy. And then, as a crowning catastrophe, when, after prodigies of will-power, after miracles of perseverance, they were entitled to think that the Golden Fleece was won, it all caine to nothing. The list of the Twenty-seven had no more value than the most insignificant scrap of paper.

"The game's up!" said Lupin. "It's an absolute defeat. What if I do revenge myself on Daubrecq, ruin him and destroy him? He is the real victor, once Gilbert is going to die.

He wept anew, not with spite or rage, but with despair. Gilbert was going to die! The lad whom he called his chum, the best of his pals would be gone for ever, in a few hours. He could not save him. He was at the end of his tether. He did not even look round for a last expedient. What was the use?

And his persuasion of his own helplessness was so deep, so definite that he felt no shock of any kind on receiving a telegram from the Masher that said:

"Motor accident. Essential part broken. Long repair. Arrive to-morrow morning."

It was a last proof to show that fate had uttered its decree. He no longer thought of rebelling against the decision.

He looked at Clarisse. She was peacefully sleeping; and this total oblivion, this absence of all consciousness, seemed to him so enviable that, suddenly yielding to a fit of cowardice, he seized the bottle, still half-filled with the sleeping-draught, and drank it down.