“Has it occurred to you that you made a mistake?”
“Go and tell that to somebody who'll believe you!” he sneered. “They came here and took a room. I met him coming out of it. I'd do it again if I had a chance, and do it better.”
“It was not Sidney.”
“Aw, chuck it!”
“It's a fact. I got here not two minutes after you left. The girl was still there. It was some one else. Sidney was not out of the hospital last night. She attended a lecture, and then an operation.”
Joe listened. It was undoubtedly a relief to him to know that it had not been Sidney; but if K. expected any remorse, he did not get it.
“If he is that sort, he deserves what he got,” said the boy grimly.
And K. had no reply. But Joe was glad to talk. The hours he had spent alone in the little room had been very bitter, and preceded by a time that he shuddered to remember. K. got it by degrees—his descent of the staircase, leaving Wilson lying on the landing above; his resolve to walk back and surrender himself at Schwitter's, so that there could be no mistake as to who had committed the crime.
“I intended to write a confession and then shoot myself,” he told K. “But the barkeeper got my gun out of my pocket. And—”
After a pause: “Does she know who did it?”