“I, John Henry Jackson, being of sound mind, and having been warned by the police, declare the following statement to be a true account of what I have done. On the afternoon of the ⸻, I killed that dog, Sir James Watson, because he is not fit to live. He will not hear the cry of the prisoner or the oppressed, but his heart has been hardened like Pharoah. I went to his house in Leveson Square, which I had been watching for an opportunity, and he opened the door to me. He was delivered into my hands, but I would not slay him then. I knew that the time had come, so I wrote to the Central News Agency, with whom I have often had correspondence, and told them of his death. I had called at Scotland Yard some days before and seen Superintendent Sinclair.” Boyce paused, and Sinclair looked up with a start.
“While he was not looking, I took some of his paper, and a letter he had signed, and so I wrote on the paper to show that it was not murder. Sir James came out and posted a letter, and I nearly killed him then, but the time had not come, so I followed him into the house, and shot him. It is a good deed and I do not mind having done it.
(Signed) J. H. Jackson.
“Well, what do you make of that?”
Sinclair and Collins looked up, and their eyes met.
“Absolute rubbish,” said Collins, “the man is obviously a lunatic.”
“What about the reference to you?” said Boyce to Sinclair.
“I do remember a wild man coming here with some grievance. I don’t know how he got in at all. Lewis let him in, but I have no recollection of him taking any letter of mine.”
“Still, he may have done,” said Boyce.
“Of course,” said the other. “There is always a tray full of type-written letters of no great importance, waiting to go out. They would not be registered till they had been collected and one might have gone. It’s possible.”
“The whole thing is preposterous. What about the telephone messages that Sinclair and I had?” said Collins.
“Oh, he says he sent them from a Call Office.”