on't find you at your office. I
have found out who killed Manderson, as this despatch will show.
That was my problem; yours is to decide what use to make of it. It
definitely charges an unsuspected person with having a hand in the
crime, and practically accuses him of being the murderer, so I
don't suppose you will publish it before his arrest, and I believe
it is illegal to do so afterwards until he has been tried and found
guilty. You may decide to publish it then; and you may find it
possible to make some use or other before then of the facts I have
given. That is your affair. Meanwhile, will you communicate with
Scotland Yard, and let them see what I have written? I have done
with the Manderson mystery, and I wish to God I had never touched
it. Here follows my despatch.

P. T.

I begin this, my third and probably my final despatch to the _Record_
upon the Manderson murder, with conflicting feelings. I have a strong
sense of relief, because in my two previous despatches I was obliged, in
the interests of justice, to withhold facts ascertained by me which
would, if published then, have put a certain person upon his guard and
possibly have led to his escape; for he is a man of no common boldness
and resource. Those facts I shall now set forth. But I have, I confess,
no liking for the story of treachery and perverted cleverness which I
have to tell. It leaves an evil taste in the mouth, a savor of something
revolting in the deeper puzzle of motive underlying the puzzle of the
crime itself, which I believe I have solved.

It will be remembered that in my first despatch I described the
situation as I found it on reaching this place early on Tuesday morning.
I told how the body was found, and in what state; dwelt upon the
complete mystery surrounding the crime and mentioned one or two local
theories about it; gave some account of the dead man's domestic
surroundings; and furnished a somewhat detailed description of his
movements on the evening before his death. I gave, too, a little fact
which may or may not have seemed irrelevant: that a quantity of whisky
much larger than Manderson habitually drank at night had disappeared
from his private decanter since the last time he was seen alive. On the
following day, the day of the inquest, I wired little more than an
abstract of the proceedings in the coroner's court, of which a verbatim
report was made at my re