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The duke suddenly clenched his hands and said, thickly, “Well, I had a motive.”

“Then you’re all right,” said Fisher, holding out his hand with an air of huge relief. “I was pretty sure you wouldn’t really do it; you had a fright when you saw it done, as was only natural. Like a bad dream come true, wasn’t it?”

While this curious conversation was passing, Harker had gone into the house, disregarding the demonstrations of the sulky nephew, and came back presently with a new air of animation and a sheaf of papers in his hand.

“I’ve telephoned for the police,” he said, stopping to speak to Fisher, “but I think I’ve done most of their work for them. I believe I’ve found out the truth. There’s a paper here–” He stopped, for Fisher was looking at him with a singular expression; and it was Fisher who spoke next:

“Are there any papers that are not there, I wonder? I mean that are not there now?” After a pause he added: “Let us have the cards on the table. When you went through his papers in such a hurry, Harker, weren’t you looking for something to–to make sure it shouldn’t be found?”

Harker did not turn a red hair on his hard head, but he looked at the other out of the corners of his eyes.

“And I suppose,” went on Fisher, smoothly, “that is why you, too, told us lies about having found Hook alive. You knew there was something to show that you might have killed him, and you didn’t dare tell us he was killed. But, believe me, it’s much better to be honest now.”

Harker’s haggard face suddenly lit up as if with infernal flames.

“Honest,” he cried, “it’s not so damned fine of you fellows to be honest. You’re all born with silver spoons in your mouths, and then you swagger about with everlasting virtue because you haven’t got other people’s spoons in your pockets. But I was born in a Pimlico lodging house and I had to make my spoon, and there’d be plenty to say I only spoiled a horn or an honest man. And if a struggling man staggers a bit over the line in his youth, in the lower parts of the law which are pretty dingy, anyhow, there’s always some old vampire to hang on to him all his life for it.”

“Guatemalan Golcondas, wasn’t it?” said Fisher, sympathetically.

Harker suddenly shuddered. Then he said, “I believe you must know everything, like God Almighty.”

“I know too much,” said Horne Fisher, “and all the wrong things.”

The other three men were drawing nearer to them, but before they came too near, Harker said, in a voice that had recovered all its firmness:

“Yes, I did destroy a paper, but I really did find a paper, too; and I believe that it clears us all.”

“Very well,” said Fisher, in a louder and more cheerful tone; “let us all have the benefit of it.”

“On the very top of Sir Isaac’s papers,” explained Harker, “there was a threatening letter from a man named Hugo. It threatens to kill our unfortunate friend very much in the way that he was actually killed. It is a wild letter, full of taunts; you can see it for yourselves; but it makes a particular point of poor Hook’s habit of fishing from the island. Above all, the man professes to be writing from a boat. And, since we alone went across to him,” and he smiled in a rather ugly fashion, “the crime must have been committed by a man passing in a boat.”

“Why, dear me!” cried the duke, with something almost amounting to animation. “Why, I remember the man called Hugo quite well! He was a sort of body servant and bodyguard of Sir Isaac. You see, Sir Isaac was in some fear of assault. He was–he was not very popular with several people. Hugo was discharged after some row or other; but I remember him well. He was a great big Hungarian fellow with great mustaches that stood out on each side of his face.”