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190 written large all over them. I was conscious that I must say something. If Hume had only been there to prompt me! Bracing myself together, I made a plunge.

"I will tell you everything. I'll keep back nothing. What would be the use? You'd be sure to find out"

"Quite so."

"She saw me kill him. She tried to save him. She rushed forward, as he fell back into her arms, so that his life's blood dyed her cloak."

"That was the way of it—as he fell back. From the position in which he was found, the idea was that he fell forward."

"Well, it might have been forward. I—I was hardly in a state of mind to pay close attention to every detail."

"With what did you kill him?"

"With—with a knife which I brought home with me from a tribe of negroes on the West Coast of Africa."

"Might I see the weapon?"

I had an armoury of such things, but was conscious that there was nothing among them which could have been responsible for the injuries which had been inflicted on Edwin Lawrence.

"I haven't it. I took it out with me just now, and—threw it into the river."