’Twas a very ugly situation for me, and nobody saw that quicker than what I did; but I kept my nerve and didn’t lift a finger to the man after I was satisfied that not a spark of life remained in him.  I said to myself as I ran home that all I could do was to tell naked truth and hope for the best, though at that moment I couldn’t fail to see the truth as I told it was bound to look a thought fanciful to the unbiased eye.  But I went straight to Sir Walter, and gave him word for word, leaving out no item of the story and putting my revolver on his desk for him to guard after he’d heard all.

He was a lot shocked, of course, and awful sorry to lose Tom Bond; but he believed every word I told him and knew the facts must be exactly as I revealed ’em.  Then he sent post-haste for the police and a doctor, and I took ’em to the scene, and men fetched a hurdle and the body of Bond was brought down to the garage and treated with all due respect.  The doctor examined him then and found he’d been shot through the back at tolerable close range; and the ball had gone through heart and lung and killed him instantly.  ’Twas dark by now, and Dr. James said as how he’d be back with another surgeon next morning.  But one mighty strange thing increased my difficulties, because, when we came to hunt for it, the weapon I marked a foot from the dead man’s hand was there no longer.  And that meant two things.  It meant, to me, that somebody had been beside Bond after I left him; and it meant to the police a tidy big question as to whether my word could be depended upon.  Nought was done until the next day and then the inquest was arranged for and a police inspector spent a long time in my company and finished by telling me straight that I was in a tolerable tight place.  We knew each other as friends in Little Silver, but the inspector—­Bassett he was called—­felt terrible disposed to arrest me, and only when Sir Walter went bail I wouldn’t run away did he abstain from getting a warrant.

To Joshua Owlet, of course, they went; but there a shocking thing happened, for the man swore I was lying and that he knew nought about the affair and that he had never warned me nor nothing like that.  He said how Bond had come to him with his tale about loving Jenny, and he’d only told him same as he’d told me, that Jenny’s duty would lie with her father and he didn’t wish her to marry anybody.  So it looked as if the only one who knew the truth must be the dead man, and he was gone beyond recall.  They found he’d been shot by an army revolver with a ball of the usual pattern, and more they didn’t know; and when Sir Walter pointed out that my revolver was loaded in all chambers and hadn’t been fired, all the police said was I’d had plenty of time to fire it and clean it and load it again afore I gave it to him.

And the next thing that happened to me was that I was locked up, tried afore the justices and committed for trial at the Assizes for the murder of Tom Bond.