"Bah! Well, I'll fool you all! Arrest me for murdering the old woman,
will you? Like hell you will!"

He stepped back a pace, Colonel Ashley following.

"Keep back!" cried Larch. "If you touch me--! I'm not afraid of you.
Yes, I did kill her! I didn't mean to, but I did. The game's up! I
can see that. But you'll never get me to the chair. I'll fool you
all! I'm not afraid to die!"

Before the colonel or Aaron Grafton, who just then burst through the
bushes fringing the path, could make a move to prevent him, Langford
Larch, with a cry like that of a stricken beast, threw himself over the
edge of the rocky precipice, and his body went crashing down a hundred
feet into the swirling waters below.




CHAPTER XXII

HIS LAST CASE

Slowly the bruised and cut lips moved. Faintly came from the maimed
throat a hoarse whisper.

"I--did--it! I know this is the end. I'll confess everything!"

Before his death, which followed soon after he had been taken from the
swirling waters, Langford Larch made a complete confession, telling how
he had killed Mrs. Darcy.

Swiftly went the news to the jail, and later to the courthouse, whence,
after a conference between the grave judge and a somewhat disappointed,
though perhaps gladly so, prosecutor of the pleas, James Darcy walked
forth a free man, honorably discharged from the custody of the court,
the indictment against him for murder quashed.

Amy Mason was the first to greet her lover when he stepped away from
the bench of the judge, before which he stood to hear himself cleared
of the charge.

"Oh, Jimmie boy! I'm so glad!" and her eyes beamed.

"And so am I, Amy. If you knew what I have gone through--"

"As if I didn't know, Jimmie boy! The colonel told me some of it."'

"Did he? Isn't he a trump? Where is he now?"

"Oh, dad carried him off for some long-delayed fishing," answered Amy,
as she and James Darcy left the courtroom before a throng, that could
not be restrained from cheering, despite the cries of "Silence!" on the
part of the constable.

"But how did he know that Larch killed her?" asked Darcy, as he and Amy
rode away in her car, amid the cheers of the throng outside the county
building.

"By the process of elimination, so he told dad. He never for an
instant really believed you guilty, Jimmie boy, even after the
discovery of the electric wires, though he let those two detectives
think he did."

"And what about Singa Phut and Harry King?"

"Oh, they were only incidents, so Colonel Ashley says," went on the
happy girl, as the automobile rolled along. "Even that funny Spotty
was 'eliminated', as our dear old fisherman calls it, when he explained
about the diamond cross. And as for Mr. Grafton, though he was mixed
up in the jewel part of the mystery, he was only acting to help Miss
Ratchford, as she wants to be called. Poor girl, she's had a hard
time, too! I hope she finds as much happiness as--"

"As who?" asked Darcy, as Amy hesitated.

"As I have," came the gentle answer, as Amy gazed with shining eyes at
the man beside her.

Langford Larch told everything in the brief time left him between his
fatal leap and the passing of his soul to a higher judgment than that
of the county courts. Some time before the events leading to the
separation, a meeting between his wife and Grafton had been witnessed
by one of Larch's hotel employees, who told of it, magnifying its
importance. Larch's jealous disposition was inflamed, and there was a
stormy scene between him and his wife. He knocked her down, and that
was the end, as far as she was concerned. She told him she would leave
him. She admitted that she still cared for Grafton, but denied any
intimacy with him. Then came the legal separation.

Before this, however, Larch had missed his wife's diamond cross, and
charged her with having disposed of it. During their final interview
she told the truth, of how it had been stepped on, and that Grafton had
taken it to be repaired. It was then that Larch saw his opportunity
for getting possession of the valuable stones, for his debts were
pressing, and, though it was suspected by few, he needed a large sum in
cash.

One night, partly intoxicated, which was unusual for him, and perhaps
on this occasion done in desperation, Larch called at the jewelry


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