"You've not won yet, Bill," she uttered grimly. The last hole was over 400 yards--Bogey four. I took a fine straight drive down the "pritty." Mary on the other hand hooked her tee-shot into the rough and after playing the odd she was still in the rough. She couldn't hope therefore for anything better than a five. I rubbed my hands in unconcealed delight. I could reach the green with a full brassie shot, which was a trifle risky, or I could "kick my hat along" for a five and make absolutely certain of a half at the worst. I determined to be magnificent! "Give me the brassie," I called to Jack. I struck fiercely and quickly--a good enough shot but with just the suspicion of a "pull." To my utter consternation the ball pitched in a small bunker. Mary came well out of the gorse. I was rattled. My recovery was poor and I saw Mary, playing beautifully, get her five and the hole. All square! As her last shot rattled the tin, Baddeley walked up briskly, his face alight with excitement.
"A grand game, Miss Considine. I never felt more excited in all my life than over that last hole. I want you to grant me a favor. Could I have that ball of yours as a memento?" Mary nodded--too overcome to speak and he looked towards me as though in support of his request.
"I'll get it for you, Baddeley," I said and bent down to collect it. As I did so he sprang forward and something clicked on my wrists. I heard Baddeley's voice--faint yet distinct--miles away seemingly!
"William Cunningham, I arrest you for the Wilful Murder of Gerald Prescott and I warn you that anything you may say may be used as evidence against you."
Then Mary fell in a dead faint on the grass.
I have been asked by Cunningham to write the concluding chapter to the manuscript that has just reached me. Needless to say it has traveled by a somewhat circuitous route from the institution wherein he has been detained for so many years. My presence there in the latter part of last year awakened, no doubt, his egotistical interest in the crime, and caused him to put his own account of it to paper. His accompanying note to me contains the remark that after all I am preëminently the right person to finish the affair. Perhaps I am. At any rate, I've decided to do what he requests, if only to stifle certain ill-founded and prejudiced statements that were current for some time after Cunningham's arrest, trial, sentence and subsequent detention "during His Majesty's pleasure." Now for the facts. The great difficulty for us who attempted to investigate the Considine Manor tragedy lay in the separation of the "faked" clues from the true ones. That, of course, to a certain extent, would apply with equal force to a number of other crimes, but in this instance we were arrayed against a criminal--proved afterwards to be a homicidal maniac who had deliberately set out to lead us astray. That was, as I have foreshadowed, our main trouble. Our second difficulty was the apparent absence of motive. But after a time this second matter became less obscure to me. I have read Cunningham's account of the tragedy very carefully, and I will say this: he has been very fair to his readers. Only three clues have been kept from them, and in two of these three cases he himself is unaware of them to this day. The third omission he can be forgiven, for to have given it in its full significance at the time when it came under my notice would have destroyed some of the interest in the narrative from the pure mystery-story point of view. I will now attempt to show how I arrived at my conclusions. When I was called to the billiard room that morning I was very much at sea--the whole thing seemed untrue, but when I pulled my wits together I eventually found that I had to find satisfactory answers to four questions.