"I can understand that."
"We'll hope you don't come under either head, my boy. Well, we've been waiting for von Erstein, and now, thanks to you, we've got him. This woman went to him to-day after you left her; she was with him a considerable time; she left in great agitation; and he followed later to the flat which had been taken for this affair of yours. That he murdered her, there is no doubt, after what you've told me; but it's got to be proved. You won't be sorry if it is, probably."
"He ought to be hanged," I exclaimed impulsively.
He fixed his keen eyes on me, and in an instant I saw what I had done and that this was one of his infernal traps.
"You're either forgetting yourself, or beginning to remember things, aren't you?" he asked deliberately, with one of his queer inscrutable smiles. "It's in England that they hang murderers, you know."
I could have cursed myself for the idiotic slip, as his eyes bored right into my brain.
CHAPTER XX
VON GRATZEN'S WILINESS
Abashed and confused by this unexpected trap, I sat cudgelling my wits for something to say, and at last stammered out, "I—I meant lynched, hanged on the nearest lamp-post, sir."