“If I might explain—”
“Don't explain. It's sure to be a lie, and there's no time for explanations. What was I going to ask you? Ah! Have you any mates?”
“In a few minutes, if you—”
“Have you any mates? Curse you. If you start any soapy palaver I'll shoot. Have you any mates?”
“No,” said Mr. Ledbetter.
“I suppose it's a lie,” said the stout man. “But you'll pay for it if it is. Why the deuce didn't you floor me when I came upstairs? You won't get a chance to now, anyhow. Fancy getting under the bed! I reckon it's a fair cop, anyhow, so far as you are concerned.”
“I don't see how I could prove an alibi,” remarked Mr. Ledbetter, trying to show by his conversation that he was an educated man. There was a pause. Mr. Ledbetter perceived that on a chair beside his captor was a large black bag on a heap of crumpled papers, and that there were torn and burnt papers on the table. And in front of these, and arranged methodically along the edge were rows and rows of little yellow rouleaux—a hundred times more gold than Mr. Ledbetter had seen in all his life before. The light of two candles, in silver candlesticks, fell upon these. The pause continued. “It is rather fatiguing holding up my hands like this,” said Mr. Ledbetter, with a deprecatory smile.
“That's all right,” said the fat man. “But what to do with you I don't exactly know.”
“I know my position is ambiguous.”
“Lord!” said the fat man, “ambiguous! And goes about with his own soap, and wears a thundering great clerical collar. You ARE a blooming burglar, you are—if ever there was one!”