Mr. Byrne threw the end of his cigar into the fire, cleared his throat, and opening the yellow, time-worn paper, read as under:--
"My dear Legros,
"You will be surprised to hear from me so quickly after our last farewell, and to see the place from which this letter is written. Yes, I am back once more in the old spot--penniless--a beggar! I have met with a most terrible misfortune. I have been shipwrecked, and everything I had in the world has gone to the bottom. When I say everything, you know what I mean. I mean that which cost me so dear--that which I ran so terrible a risk for--that for which one man's life, and another man's happiness, were sacrificed. But the curse of blood rested on it, and it has gone. You remember that when you parted from me on board ship, I had every prospect of a fair voyage, but during the night the wind began to rise, and by daylight next morning a terrific gale was blowing. We were still in sight of land, and having sprung a leak, we put back towards a little harbour with which our captain was acquainted. But before we could reach it, the ship began to founder, and then it was every man for himself. We saved our bare lives, and that was all. I tried all I could to bribe the men to take my box with them in the boat, but it was of no avail. 'Life's sweeter than all the gold in the world,' they said. 'Your box may go to the devil, and we'll send you after it if we have any of your nonsense.' There was no use in my going abroad when I had lost the only inducement which would have taken me there. So here I am once more, the world all before me. I have just enough money left to buy me to-morrow's dinner. After that----? But I need not say more. I trust to you, my dear Legros, to send me a five-pound note by return. In fact, I must have it. I know too much of you, and you know too much of me, for either of us to decline these sweet little offices of friendship for the other.
"Thine,
"Max Jacoby."
The three men looked at each other in silence as Byrne slowly refolded the letter.
"Your familiarity with the contents of this letter," said Gerald at last, "has enabled you to arrive at certain conclusions in your own mind such as we, to whom the letter comes as an utter surprise, can no more than barely guess at. Do you mind telling us what those conclusions are?"
"The conclusions I have come to are very few and very simple," said Byrne; "simple, inasmuch as, to my mind, knowing what I know, they are plainly discoverable through the thin veil of obscurity in which the contents of the letter are purposely involved. My conclusions are these: That this letter was written within a very short time after the murder and subsequent trial. That the property whose loss Jacoby bewails in such bitter terms was neither more nor less than the proceeds of the murder, with which he was going abroad. That when the ship went to the bottom, Jacoby's ill-gotten gains went with her, and that Jacoby himself, having no longer the means of going abroad, came back to London in a state of utter destitution, as is evidenced by his begging the loan of a five-pound note from his quondam friend."
"Yes," said Gerald, after a few minutes of silent thought, "I quite agree with you that the construction which you have put upon the contents of this letter is a most feasible one, and I am inclined to think that it is also the true one. But even granting that such be the case, I confess I am still at a loss to understand in what way a proposal of marriage from Jacoby to your daughter can forward by one single step the special end we have in view--to bring home the crime to the real murderer."
"That, too, is where I am puzzled," said Murray; "for, singular as this letter is, and confirmatory as it is of the belief I have all along maintained, that Jacoby is the guilty man, I altogether fail to see in what way Mr. Byrne's late proceedings tend to fix the guilt upon him."