"Anyhow you had arranged that some one else should do it, because you had secretly accused him of treachery to his associates. And there isn't much difference between the two."
"How the devil do you get to know so much? Yes, I did that. I'll admit it to you after all this. But I'll go straight, as I said. And here's the proof, so far as you are concerned. The police are still round your house, and if you were to go back without a sign from me you'd all be arrested."
I had not thought of that. "You'd better give me something then."
He went again to the desk and wrote a line or two. "You are to withdraw your men. Hugo von Felsen," I read when he handed it to me.
"Perhaps that will convince you that I am in earnest," he said. "Give it to the fellow in charge there. I shall leave for Austria to-night"; and with that we parted.
On my way home I found myself speculating whether he had been sincere in that last act of his, or whether he could possibly have some other kind of motive at the back of his head. It was uncommonly like a Greek gift.
And then a possible solution occurred to me. My arrest at that moment with the papers I was carrying would have betrayed everything. He had had wit enough to remember that, although I had overlooked it. That sudden return to comparative self-possession took a fresh light in this connexion.
Could he, even now, when I had possession of such damning proofs of his guilt in both affairs, be contemplating some further treachery? Would he dare such a step? He had been reduced to the lowest depths of abject terror when I had confronted him with the proofs and extracted the confessions from him, that it was difficult to credit it was all shamming.
What could he do? His life lay in the hollow of my hand, and he knew me well enough to be certain that at the first glimpse of a trick I should act.
But he was such a slippery devil I could not be sure; and a dozen suggestions flashed into my thoughts. Had that parade of his about the police surrounding the house been no more than a bluff? There were men there, because I had taken care to see them for myself. But were they really the police?