“Is it your writing?” my watchful inquisitor repeated.
I looked again. The scrap was smaller than my note had been when it left my hands. If it were the same, then some of the words were gone. Were they the first ones or the last? It would make a difference in the reading, or rather, in the conclusions to be drawn from what remained. If only the mist would clear from before my eyes, or he would hold the slip of paper nearer! The room was very dark. The—the—
“Is it your writing?” Coroner Perry asked for the third time.
There was no denying it. My writing was peculiar and quite unmistakable. I should gain nothing by saying no.
“It looks like it,” I admitted reluctantly. “But I cannot be sure in this light. May I ask what this bit of paper is and where you found it?”
“Its contents I think you know. As for the last question I think you can answer that also if you will.”
Saying which, he quietly replaced the scrap of paper in his pocket-book.
I followed the action with my eyes. I caught a fresh glimpse of a darkened edge, and realised the cause of the faint odour which I had hitherto experienced without being conscious of it. The scrap had been plucked out of the chimney. She had tried to burn it. I remembered the fire and the smouldering bits of paper which crumbled at my touch. And this one, this, the most important—the only important one of them all, had flown, half-scorched, up the chimney and clung there within easy reach.
The whole incident was plain to me, and I could even fix upon the moment when Hexford or Clarke discovered this invaluable bit of evidence. It was just before I burst in upon them from the ballroom, and it was the undoubted occasion of the remark I then overheard:
“This settles it. He cannot escape us now.”