“I think, gentlemen,” said Holmes, quietly, “that we had best take up our position behind the door.  Every precaution is necessary when dealing with such a fellow.  You will need your handcuffs, Inspector.  You can leave the talking to me.”

We waited in silence for a minute—­one of those minutes which one can never forget.  Then the door opened and the man stepped in.  In an instant Holmes clapped a pistol to his head, and Martin slipped the handcuffs over his wrists.  It was all done so swiftly and deftly that the fellow was helpless before he knew that he was attacked.  He glared from one to the other of us with a pair of blazing black eyes.  Then he burst into a bitter laugh.

“Well, gentlemen, you have the drop on me this time.  I seem to have knocked up against something hard.  But I came here in answer to a letter from Mrs. Hilton Cubitt.  Don’t tell me that she is in this?  Don’t tell me that she helped to set a trap for me?”

“Mrs. Hilton Cubitt was seriously injured, and is at death’s door.”

The man gave a hoarse cry of grief, which rang through the house.

“You’re crazy!” he cried, fiercely.  “It was he that was hurt, not she.  Who would have hurt little Elsie?  I may have threatened her—­God forgive me!—­but I would not have touched a hair of her pretty head.  Take it back—­you!  Say that she is not hurt!”

“She was found badly wounded, by the side of her dead husband.”

He sank with a deep groan on the settee and buried his face in his manacled hands.  For five minutes he was silent.  Then he raised his face once more, and spoke with the cold composure of despair.

“I have nothing to hide from you, gentlemen,” said he.  “If I shot the man he had his shot at me, and there’s no murder in that.  But if you think I could have hurt that woman, then you don’t know either me or her.  I tell you, there was never a man in this world loved a woman more than I loved her.  I had a right to her.  She was pledged to me years ago.  Who was this Englishman that he should come between us?  I tell you that I had the first right to her, and that I was only claiming my own.

“She broke away from your influence when she found the man that you are,” said Holmes, sternly.  “She fled from America to avoid you, and she married an honourable gentleman in England.  You dogged her and followed her and made her life a misery to her, in order to induce her to abandon the husband whom she loved and respected in order to fly with you, whom she feared and hated.  You have ended by bringing about the death of a noble man and driving his wife to suicide.  That is your record in this business, Mr. Abe Slaney, and you will answer for it to the law.”

“If Elsie dies, I care nothing what becomes of me,” said the American.  He opened one of his hands, and looked at a note crumpled up in his palm.  “See here, mister! he cried, with a gleam of suspicion in his eyes, “you’re not trying to scare me over this, are you?  If the lady is hurt as bad as you say, who was it that wrote this note?” He tossed it forward on to the table.