"Meanin', I take it," the detective interpolated, "you plead not guilty?"
P. Sybarite nodded curtly. "It's a lie, out of whole cloth," he declared. "You've only to search me. I'm not strong for that—mind—and I'm going to make the lot of you smart for this indignity; but I'm perfectly willing to prove my innocence now, by letting you search me, so long as it affords me an earlier opportunity to catch Mister Shaynon when he hasn't got you to protect him."
"That's big talk," commended the detective, apparently a little prepossessed; "and it's all to the good if you can back it up." He rose. "You don't mind my going through your pockets—sure?"
"Go ahead," P. Sybarite told him shortly.
"To save time," Shaynon suggested dispassionately, "you might explore his coat-tail pockets first. It was there that I saw him put away the brooch."
Nervously in his indignation, P. Sybarite caught his coat-tails from beneath his Inverness, dragged them round in front of him, and fumbling, found a pocket.
Groping therein, his fingers brushed something strange to him—a small, hard, and irregular body which, escaping his clutches, fell with a soft thud to the carpet at his feet.
Transfixed, he stared down, and gulped with horror, shaken by a sensation little short of nausea, as he recognised in the object—a bar of yellow metal studded with winking brilliants of considerable size—the brooch described by Shaynon.
With a noncommittal grunt, the detective stooped and retrieved this damning bit of evidence, while the manager moved quickly to his side, to inspect the find. And P. Sybarite looked up with blank eyes in a pallid, wizened face in time to see Shaynon bare his teeth—his lips curling back in a manner peculiarly wolfish and irritating—and snarl a mirthless laugh.
It was something inopportune; the man could have done no better than keep his peace; left to himself P. Sybarite would in all probability have floundered and blustered and committed himself inextricably in a multitude of hasty and ill-considered protestations.