“You didn’t mean us ever to meet again, Mr. Cloete, Stafford says, demurely. . .  That fellow, when he had the drink he wanted—­he wasn’t a drunkard—­would put on this sort of sly, modest air. . .  But since the captain committed suicide, he says, I have been sitting here thinking it out.  All sorts of things happen.  Conspiracy to lose the ship—­attempted murder—­and this suicide.  For if it was not suicide, Mr. Cloete, then I know of a victim of the most cruel, cold-blooded attempt at murder; somebody who has suffered a thousand deaths.  And that makes the thousand pounds of which we spoke once a quite insignificant sum.  Look how very convenient this suicide is. . .

“He looks up at Cloete then, who smiles at him and comes quite close to the table.

“You killed Harry Dunbar, he whispers. . .  The fellow glares at him and shows his teeth:  Of course I did!  I had been in that cabin for an hour and a half like a rat in a trap. . .  Shut up and left to drown in that wreck.  Let flesh and blood judge.  Of course I shot him!  I thought it was you, you murdering scoundrel, come back to settle me.  He opens the door flying and tumbles right down upon me; I had a revolver in my hand, and I shot him.  I was crazy.  Men have gone crazy for less.

“Cloete looks at him without flinching.  Aha!  That’s your story, is it? . . .  And he shakes the table a little in his passion as he speaks. . .  Now listen to mine.  What’s this conspiracy?  Who’s going to prove it?  You were there to rob.  You were rifling his cabin; he came upon you unawares with your hands in the drawer; and you shot him with his own revolver.  You killed to steal—­to steal!  His brother and the clerks in the office know that he took sixty pounds with him to sea.  Sixty pounds in gold in a canvas bag.  He told me where they were.  The coxswain of the life-boat can swear to it that the drawers were all empty.  And you are such a fool that before you’re half an hour ashore you change a sovereign to pay for a drink.  Listen to me.  If you don’t turn up day after to-morrow at George Dunbar’s solicitors, to make the proper deposition as to the loss of the ship, I shall set the police on your track.  Day after to-morrow. . .

“And then what do you think?  That Stafford begins to tear his hair.  Just so.  Tugs at it with both hands without saying anything.  Cloete gives a push to the table which nearly sends the fellow off his chair, tumbling inside the fender; so that he has got to catch hold of it to save himself. . .

“You know the sort of man I am, Cloete says, fiercely.  I’ve got to a point that I don’t care what happens to me.  I would shoot you now for tuppence.

“At this the cur dodges under the table.  Then Cloete goes out, and as he turns in the street—­you know, little fishermen’s cottages, all dark; raining in torrents, too—­the other opens the window of the parlour and speaks in a sort of crying voice —