“How about that Savage automatic?” said Yorke, “the one you shot those dogs with yesterday?  We’ve got your Luger, but where’s the Savage gun?”

“Oh, yes!” replied Gully wearily, “of course I had two guns.  I never used to pack the Luger around—­afterwards, well! . . . for obvious reasons.  You’ll probably find the Savage in the cellar at my place—­that’s if it isn’t buried, like I nearly was.”

There was a long silence, broken only by the scratch, scratch, of the inspector’s pen, as he rapidly indited a formal statement for the prisoner to sign.  Once during its composition he halted for a brief space and, leaning back in his chair, gazed long with a sort of dreary sternness at the huge, unkempt figure before him.

“Gully,” he said slowly, “whatever in God’s name put it into your head to stand off the Police in the way you did?  Shooting those two poor chaps and nearly putting the kibosh on five others!  Whatever did you hope to gain by it?  You must have known it was absolutely impossible for you to make your get-away from us.  Why, man! we had you cornered like a wolf in a trap.  It was worse than silly and useless and cruel for you to act in the way you did!”

“Oh, my God!  I don’t know!” moaned Gully, rocking despondently with his head in his hands.  “I must have gone clean mad for the time being. . . .”  He gazed gloomily at Slavin and Yorke, muttering half to himself:  “What little things do trip a man up in the end!  The best laid schemes o’ mice and men!  But for my shooting those cursed dogs yesterday you’d never, never have suspected me.  The whole thing would just have been filed and forgotten in time—­would just have remained one of those unfathomable mysteries.  Directly after I’d thrown down on those curs I realized what a d——­d bad break I’d made—­what my momentary loss of temper was going to cost me.  I could tell by the way you all looked at me what was in your minds. . . .”

“Yes, but how about that fishing expedition of ours, Gully?” said Yorke.  “You seem to have forgotten that.”  And he related the story of Redmond’s dive.

“Ah!” retorted Gully, bitterly.  “And yet you might have got snagged a hundred times there and only just cursed and snapped your line and reeled in, thinking it was a log or something. . . .  Well, as I was saying, I realized the jig was up after that dog business, and directly I got home I began making preparations for my get-away last night.  If you’d all only have come half an hour later than you did—­That’s what made me so mad—­just another half hour later, mind you, and I would have been away—­en route for the Coast by the night train.”

Presently Kilbride threw aside his pen and straightened up.  “Now, listen, Gully!” he said.  And he read out the confession that he had composed from the main facts of the prisoner’s remarkable statement.

“Yes!” muttered Gully thoughtfully, as the inspector finished.  “Yes, that will do, Kilbride.  Give me the pen, please, and I will sign it. . . .”