"Four drinks were mixed for us last night, Morphew, by your man Pagan. The other three were consumed without ill effects. Thirty minutes after drinking mine, I became unconscious of my actions."
"Never knew a Frenchman yet could hold his liquor like a gentleman."
"No doubt monsieur knows best how a gentleman drinks . . . At the same time, Pagan did his best, by means of hints thinly veiled, to prepare Mrs. McFee to credit me with the robbery which was even then planned in detail."
"Is this a confession you're making?"
"Planned by you, monsieur, and brilliantly executed by your henchman, the dancing yegg."
"If you didn't know what you were doing last night, like you claim, how d'you know you didn't pull the job off yourself?"
"One was waiting for that question, one knew it was sure to come after the preparation Pagan had made for it."
"I notice you don't seem in any sweat to answer it."
"It has been answered for me. With her complaint of the theft, Mrs. McFee communicated to the police the suspicions Pagan had been at such pains to sow in her mind; with the result that my rooms were visited early today and, like me, searched while I slept."
Morphew took the cigar from between his teeth and with an air of anxiety inspected its half-inch or more of ash. "And nothing found," he incuriously inferred.