"Willoughby was called Cash-Down," Serpos resumed, "and it remained Cash-Down until it became Cash-In. He liked the ready. He kept the ready by him. It appears that he did not like banks, and he was always afraid of his associates — whoever they were. He was supposed to have a very large sum close at band. Well!" Serpos's face darkened. "I hear that they have caught Willoughby. I see a large sum of money being carefully put away with all the numbers noted. God's truth, I am not a police secretary; I am a private secretary; I am not admitted to the Eleusinian mysteries of policecraft. I supposed, and I think naturally, that they had found Willoughby's real money. I did not ask, since I hardly wanted suspicion at the beginning, and what I thought I knew I was not supposed to know at all. It was a mistake — but, I again submit, a natural mistake. And that, my friends, is all I think I need tell you."
"Does you good to get it off your chest, though, don't it?" asked H.M. The corners of his mouth were turned down. "Lemme see if there's something that don't go with this. Last night you were nabbed at Moreton Abbot railway station by somebody you thought was a real policeman. You broke down. Then you tumbled to the fact that it wasn't a real policeman. Whereupon, son, you turned nasty. If I got the story correctly, you said somethin' like, `You never came from the police. You never came from Charters or Merrivale. I know where you come from. And you know all about it.' — Uh-huh. You thought, didn't you, it was a member of the Willoughby gang hidin' you up for the money?"
Serpos shrugged his shoulders with fluent motion.
"It explains matters, doesn't it?"
"Oh, no. That's just it. It makes a contradiction. It don't explain, for instance," argued H.M., inspecting his fingers, "why you were so weepily anxious a moment before that to return and take your punishment…. But let's pass that over. You seem to know an awful lot about this whole case, my lad, that I don't see how you could have learned unless — "
"Unless?" the other prompted, with a pale smile. "Is this the old bluff? It won't go down, you know."
"I mean, you were twittin' me with all kinds o' suave digs, just a minute ago, for mismanaging my part of the business to-night."
"You mean," said Serpos satirically, "the sending of a dread Secret-Service agent to Hogenauer's at Moreton Abbot, the quest of the Compleat Burglar, and all that —? My good friend: I heard the whole conversation. I was at Charters's, you know. You could not see me, and I could not see ycu, but I heard you giving instructions to someone you addressed as Blake…"
"Sure, sure. I understand that. But how'd you know it was mismanagement? How'd you know there wasn't some political hanky-panky goin' on, with Hogenauer mixed up in it?"
Serpos's mouth was twisted ironically.