Dyson's face darkened as his thoughts concentred themselves on the story he had to tell. "Yes," he presently began, facing Robert with the quiet and collected air of one who has nothing to hide, "as you have stated, I unexpectedly encountered cousin James on my way from the railway station to my lodgings. Gripping me by the arm he said, 'So you are back, are you? That is well. I want particularly to speak with you. Come with me at once to my office.' Nothing more was said, but I pretty well guessed what was in the wind. As soon as we were inside the office, with the door shut and the gas alight, he turned upon me. As I surmised, he had found out about the abstraction of the policy and the advance obtained by means of it from Noyes. I at once admitted that it was an infamous return to have made for all that he had done for me. I explained to him, as I have explained to you, by what means it happened that I was temporarily 'cornered,' that not to have raised the three hundred pounds meant exposure and ruin, and that I had every expectation of being in a position to repay the amount before the bill would fall due. But by this he had worked himself into a passion and was no longer in a condition to listen to any excuses. You cannot have forgotten to what ungovernable bursts of rage he would give way on rare occasions, in one of which, when you were boys, I have been told he all but strangled you, his brother.
"He had already opened the safe and brought thence the documents to which I had forged his signature. Placing one finger on them as they lay on the table, and speaking in coldly contemptuous tones, which stung me far more than any invective on his part would have done, he said: 'Here are the proofs of your guilt. Here is the evidence that will condemn you to penal servitude. In less than an hour from now the four walls of Merehampton gaol will hold your worthless carcase.' It was a threat that maddened me. I dashed his hand aside and seized the papers. With a cry like that of some wild animal, he sprang from his chair and flung himself upon me. Although double my age, he was a much more powerful and muscular man than I, and when once he had got his fingers fixed firmly inside my necktie and was grinding his knuckles into my throat, I was almost as powerless in his hands as a child would have been. As it seems to me now, it was all the work of a few seconds. Backward and forward we swayed and struggled, I trying desperately, but vainly, with one hand to loosen his hold of me, but still gripping the papers fast with my other hand; he, his eyes glaring with a passion that was almost maniacal, and those terrible knuckles still compressing my windpipe. I was being slowly but surely choked. Vivid jets of flame began to dance and quiver before my eyes; my heart laboured almost to the point of bursting; the papers dropped from my fingers; I could feel myself being forced back against the table till my spine was bent half double. Suddenly my fingers, wildly clutching at nothing, came in contact with a heavy iron paperweight and closed over it. With a last effort I struck with all my force at my cousin's head. For aught I know, I may have struck more than once, but in the very act consciousness left me.