“What!” he screamed, making a violent attempt to wrench himself from the grasp of his captors. Poor fool! He was one to five, and was soon reduced to physical submission. The rough usage he received in the course of the struggle appeared to tame him inwardly as well as outwardly; when he spoke again his voice was calmer.
“Do you accuse me of the murder of that man?” he asked, turning his face towards 119, Great Porter Square.
He was most surely condemning himself.
“Yon know best whether you did it,” observed Policeman X.
“Yes,” he replied, “I know best.”
“What were you doing there?” was the next enquiry.
The man looked at them slowly, in detail, as though to fix their faces in his memory, and then, opening his lips, smiled, but did not speak. Nothing more exasperating could well have been imagined than the strange smile of this wretched man—a smile which seemed to say, “You will learn nothing from me.”
It was late in the night, but a crowd had already assembled, and the whisper went round that the murderer of the man who was found so cruelly murdered in No. 119, Great Porter Square, had been caught. Short shrift would have been his, even in this law-loving city, if the excited knot of persons could have had their way; but it was the duty of the constables to protect their prisoner.
“Will you come quietly?” they asked of him.
“Why not?” he asked in return. “I shall be the gainer.”