"You—give—that—to me, Croucher!"
Croucher wavered at his voice; it was terribly threatening, each subtle tone a poisoned barb.
"What if I don't?"
"You know what!"
"The game deepens," said the crime doctor; and he did not know that his left hand had dropped the hand of hands for him.
"Your game's up if you show that letter!" cried Scarth to Croucher, who only showed him the broad of his back.
"Can you be tried twice for the same thing, doctor?" he began—but in the same breath he desperately added: "I don't care whether you can or you can't! You read that, whether or no!"
The letter was in an envelope superscribed "To the Coroner," in a wonderful imitation of Dollar's handwriting; but the letter itself, written on his own stamped paper, was a still more marvelous forgery, in which the crime doctor bade farewell to the world before stultifying his own life's work by the crime of suicide.
"That's better than anything you did in Switzerland," said Dollar, nodding to the livid man between the curtains.
"But it ain't the best thing 'e's done," cried Croucher, and stopped to roll his eyes and gloat. "The bounder's best bit was squeezin' two people for the same job—the guilty an' the innercent—'er as thought she must 've done it, an' 'im as knew 'e done it all the time!"