do again; but you'll judge that for
yourselves when I tell you my story. Never mind warning me, Inspector:
I'm ready to stand pat upon the truth.

"I'm not going to begin at the beginning. That's all there," he
indicated my bundle of papers, "and a mighty queer yarn you'll find it.
It all comes down to this: That there are some men that have good cause
to hate me and would give their last dollar to know that they had got
me. So long as I am alive and they are alive, there is no safety in
this world for me. They hunted me from Chicago to California, then they
chased me out of America; but when I married and settled down in this
quiet spot I thought my last years were going to be peaceable.

"I never explained to my wife how things were. Why should I pull her
into it? She would never have a quiet moment again; but would always be
imagining trouble. I fancy she knew something, for I may have dropped a
word here or a word there; but until yesterday, after you gentlemen had
seen her, she never knew the rights of the matter. She told you all she
knew, and so did Barker here; for on the night when this thing happened
there was mighty little time for explanations. She knows everything now,
and I would have been a wiser man if I had told her sooner. But it was a
hard question, dear," he took her hand for an instant in his own, "and I
acted for the best.

"Well, gentlemen, the day before these happenings I was over in
Tunbridge Wells, and I got a glimpse of a man in the street. It was only
a glimpse; but I have a quick eye for these things, and I never doubted
who it was. It was the worst enemy I had among them all--one who has
been after me like a hungry wolf after a caribou all these years. I
knew there was trouble coming, and I came home and made ready for it. I
guessed I'd fight through it all right on my own, my luck was a proverb
in the States about '76. I never doubted that it would be with me still.

"I was on my guard all that next day, and never went out into the park.
It's as well, or he'd have had the drop on me with that buckshot gun of
his before ever I could draw on him. After the bridge was up--my mind
was always more restful when that bridge was up in the evenings--I put
the thing clear out of my head. I never dreamed of his getting into the
house and waiting for me. But when I made my round in my dressing
gown, as was my habit, I had no sooner entered the study than I scented
danger. I guess when a man has ha