Edgar Wallace - The Man Who Knew

"You have never moved a step but that I have followed you. My agents have been with you day and night ever since the day of the murder. I have waited my time, and that has come now."

Frank heaved a long sigh, and took up his hat.

"To-morrow morning I shall have a story to tell," he said.

"You are an excellent actor," said Jasper, "and an excellent liar, but you have never deceived me."

He flung open the door.

"There is your road. You have twenty thousand pounds which my father left you. You have some fifty-five thousand pounds which you buried on the night of the murder—you remember the gardener's trowel in the car?" he said, turning to Mann.

"I give you twenty-four hours to leave England. We cannot try you for the murder of John Minute; you can still be tried for the murder of your unfortunate servants."

Frank Merrill made no movement toward the door. He walked over to the other end of the room, and stood with his back to them. Then he turned.

"Sometimes," he said, "I feel that it isn't worth while going on. It has been rather a strain—all this."

Jasper Cole sprang toward him and caught him as he fell. They laid him down, and Saul Arthur Mann called urgently on the telephone for a doctor, but Frank Merrill was dead.

"I knew," said Constable Wiseman, when the story came to him.

THE END