"'He's jumped overboard!' says he.
"'You pushed him over,' says I. 'You may as well make a clean breast of it, for I see it in your face.'
"In another minute he had confessed the whole thing. Your father had been leaning over that rail, feeling fit to die, and swearing he was going back by the next boat. In a fit of passion Lowndes had tipped him over the side, and in the black darkness, and the noise of the wind and the engines, he had gone down without a cry. That was the end of Henry Ringrose. He was drowned in the Channel in the small hours of Easter Day, four years and a half ago. Instead of a runaway swindler he was a murdered man—and now you know who murdered him!"
Harry never spoke. His face was still in his hands.
Scrafton opened his snuff-box and took an impatient pinch.
"I tell you that your father is a murdered man," he cried, "and Gordon Lowndes is his murderer!"
Harry looked up with a curious smile.
"It's a lie," said he. "He wrote to my mother from Dieppe."
"Show me the letter."
"I can't; and wouldn't if I could."