"But you locked it, surely?" he said.
"Yes, I locked it," said Mr. Carmody. "But it struck me that after you had got the butler out of the way by telling him to bring me a drink, you might have thought of breaking the door open."
In the silence which followed this devastating remark there suddenly made itself heard an odd, gurgling noise like a leaking cistern, and Soapy, gazing at his host, was shocked to observe that he had given himself up to an apoplectic spasm of laughter. Mr. Carmody's rotund body was quivering like a jelly. His eyes were closed, and he was rocking himself to and fro. And from his lips proceeded those hideous sounds of mirth.
The hope which until this moment had been sustaining Soapy had never been a strong, robust hope. From birth it had been an invalid. And now, as he listened to this laughter, the poor, sickly thing coughed quietly and died.
"Oh dear!" said Mr. Carmody, recovering. "Very funny. Very funny."
"You think it's funny, do you?" said Soapy.
"I do," said Mr. Carmody sincerely. "I wish I could have seen your face when you looked in that cupboard."
Soapy had nothing to say. He was beaten, crushed, routed, and he knew it. He stared out hopelessly on a bleak world. Outside the boathouse the sun was still shining, but not for Soapy.
"I've seen through you all along, my man," proceeded Mr. Carmody, with ungenerous triumph. "Not from the very beginning, perhaps, because I really did suppose for a while that you were what you professed to be. The first thing that made me suspicious was when I cabled over to New York to make inquiries about a well-known financier named Thomas G. Molloy and was informed that no such person existed."
Soapy did not speak. The bitterness of his meditations precluded words. His eyes were fixed on the trees and flowers on the other side of the water, and he was disliking these very much. Nature had done its best for the scene, and he thought Nature a washout.