"You might ha' been interrupted before you could take that cord off his neck," suggested Mallalieu.
"Aye—but you'd have to reckon up the average chances of that!" exclaimed Harborough, with a sharp glance at the bystanders. "And the chances are in my favour. No, sir!—whoever did this job, cut that length of cord off my coil, which anybody could get at, and used it to throw suspicion on me! That's the truth—and you'll find it out some day, whatever happens now."
Mallalieu exchanged glances with the superintendent and then faced Harborough squarely, with an air of inviting confidence.
"Now, my lad!" he said, almost coaxingly. "There's a very simple thing to do, and it'll clear this up as far as you're concerned. Just answer a plain question. Where ha' you been all night?"
A tense silence fell—broken by the crackling of the wood in the grate, which the charwoman had at last succeeded in stirring into a blaze, and by the rattling of the fire-irons which she now arranged in the fender. Everybody was watching the suspected man, and nobody as keenly as Brereton. And Brereton saw that a deadlock was at hand. A strange look of obstinacy and hardness came into Harborough's eyes, and he shook his head.
"No!" he answered. "I shan't say! The truth'll come out in good time without that. It's not necessary for me to say. Where I was during the night is my business—nobody else's."
"You'll not tell?" asked Mallalieu.
"I shan't tell," replied Harborough.
"You're in danger, you know," said Mallalieu.
"In your opinion," responded Harborough, doggedly. "Not in mine! There's law in this country. You can arrest me, if you like—but you'll have your work set to prove that I killed yon old man. No, sir! But——" here he paused, and looking round him, laughed almost maliciously "—but I'll tell you what I'll do," he went on. "I'll tell you this, if it'll do you any good—if I liked to say the word, I could prove my innocence down to the ground! There!"