"Tell me where I am," Smerdon answered in the same language, "and how long I have to live."
"You are in my house, the house of the Curé of Sastratz. For the span of your life none can answer but God. But, my son, I should do ill if I did not tell you that your hours are numbered. The doctor from St. Christoph has seen you."
"Give me paper and ink----"
"My son, you cannot write, and----"
"I will write," Smerdon said faintly, "even though I die in the attempt."
The Curé felt his right arm, which was not broken like the other, and then he brought him paper and ink, and holding the former up on his Breviary before the dying man, he put the pen in his hand. And slowly and painfully, and with eyes that occasionally closed, Smerdon wrote:
"I am dying at the house of the Curé of Sastratz, near the Schwarzweiss Pass; from a fall. Tell Gervase that I alone murdered Walter Crandall. If he will come to me and I am still alive, I will tell him all.
"Philip Smerdon."
Then he put the letter in an envelope and addressed it to Ida Raughton. And ere he once more lapsed into unconsciousness, he asked the priest to write another for him to his mother, and to address it to an hotel at Zurich.
"They will be sent at once?" he asked faintly.