"By gad," said Antrim softly.
His sandy eyelashes flickered a little, but be kept fixed on H.M. a blank stare, which seemed to grow through wonder to excitement. He was sitting motionless and erect, his large knuckled hands on his knees and the cigarette burning almost to the flesh. Shifting the cigarette to his left hand, he lifted up his right hand slowly, brought it down, and snapped the fingers. It had almost the air of a ritual.
"By gad, I knew it! I thought so. And I'm willing to bet I saw the fellow who did it."
"Did you, now?" inquired H.M. He said it casually. But the rest of us, I think, seemed to hear a clang as gates closed; or as somebody tumbled headlong into a trap. "But weren't you at all curious? Do you usually see people in the act of burglin' your house without any comment?' How is it we haven't heard about this before?"
He brushed this aside.
"Don't joggle me! It wasn't anything like that. Nothing — serious. I couldn't be sure. It was like this. After I had locked up the house, I went up to bed about a quarter to eleven. But I couldn't sleep…:'
The strange part was that despite the limping sound of this (even the familiar term, "But I couldn't sleep," was delivered like a poor actor speaking bad lines), there was a certain conviction about the man. I was poised between two incredulities, and I did not know what to think.
"Why couldn't you sleep?" asked H.M.
"You ask me," retorted Antrim bitterly. "Ha! I say! That's good. You tell me you know all about what Betty and I have been afraid of, and then you ask me why I couldn't sleep! Because we didn't know what the devil was going on, that's why. Because that infernal letter about her father had come only the day before, and-"
"And she hadn't told you, until she did get that letter," interposed H.M., "who her father was or what he was? Hey? And she mentioned who Hogenauer was, too?"