"At least," said he, "you have perfected the story, haven't you?"
"I——"
"And now," Mr. Hitchin broke in incisively, "let us consider the facts! We will take them, one by one, and I beg that you will listen. Item one: I sat in the lobby downstairs until seventeen minutes of one o'clock this morning, Fry. No David Prentiss passed me, going out. Nobody left this hotel with a bundle or a bag!"
"You didn't see him," Anthony said.
"Because he was not there! Listen, please, and do not interrupt, Fry. I like you, or I should not be here. I wish to help you, if such a thing is possible, or I should have gone at once to the police," said the remarkable Mr. Hitchin. "You, like many a man before you, forget perfectly plain details. In this case, you have forgotten that my apartment is directly beneath yours—that the elevators here have latticed gates, so that one can see from any floor whoever may be passing in one of the cars—that sound travels perfectly in this building when the street is quiet, as at night. So to get to item two. About two o'clock this morning there was the sound of a heavy fall in this very room!"
Johnson Boller was grasping the trend more rapidly than was Anthony, and he was growing less comfortable.
"I fell!" he said.
"Did you really?" asked the demon detective. "Yet—you're in that room, I take it? Yet you got out of bed immediately after and walked in here; I heard your step. Don't flush, Boller! It takes practice to carry out a thing of this kind and whatever the motive may have been, you gentlemen are not old hands. And so to item three: it must have been about four when a policeman came to this door. Why?"
"There was supposed to be a burglar here. It was a false alarm," Anthony said, less collectedly.
Hitchin lighted the pipe he had filled and smiled.