In their endeavour to find out whether or not I was present when this call was made, I learned the nature of their own suspicions.

They believed that Adelaide in some moment of prevision had managed to reach the telephone and send out this message.

But what did I believe?
What could I believe?
All the incidents of the deadly struggle which must have preceded the fatal culminating act, were mysteries which my mind refused to penetrate.

After hours of torturing uncertainty, and an evening which was the miserable precursor of a still more miserable night, I decided to drop conjecture and await the enlightenment which must come with the morrow.
It was, therefore, in a condition of mingled dread and expectation that I opened the paper which was brought me the next morning.

Of the shock which it gave me to see my own name blotting the page with suggestions of hideous crime, I will not speak, but pass at once to the few gleams of added knowledge I was able to gather from those abominable columns.
Arthur, the good-for-nothing brother, had returned from his wild carouse and had taken affairs in charge with something like spirit and a decent show of repentance for his own shortcomings and the mad taste for liquor which had led him away from home that night.