It had the desired effect. Garrod gasped and shivered, and looked at Jack as if he saw him for the first. He ceased to struggle, and Jack untied the ropes. Garrod sat up, a ghastly figure, with the water trickling from his dank hair over his livid face.
"I'm all wet," he said, putting up the back of his hand. Without expressing any curiosity as to what had happened, he dried his face and neck with his handkerchief.
"Do you remember what we were talking about?" asked Jack, concealing his anxiety.
"You wanted me to write something," Garrod said dully.
"Are you willing?"
Garrod nodded, and held out his hand for the pen and the little book.
Jack breathed freely again. The blade of a paddle served Garrod for a writing table. The man was entirely submissive.
"But do you know what you're doing?" demanded Jack frowning.
Garrod nodded again. "You want me to write out a confession," he said. "What shall I write."
Jack dictated: "I, Francis Garrod, desire to state of my own free will that on the morning of October ninth, nineteen hundred and six, I took the sum of five thousand dollars from the vault of the Bank of Canada, Montreal. I knew that Malcolm Piers had gone away, and I allowed the theft to be fixed on him."