"I'll expose you before them all. I'll tell them everything."
Jimmy shook his head.
"Too melodramatic," he said. "'I call on heaven to judge between this man and me!' kind of thing. I shouldn't. What do you propose to tell, anyway?"
"Will you deny that you were a crook in New York?"
"I will. I was nothing of the kind."
"What?"
"If you'll listen, I can explain—"
"Explain!" The other's voice rose again. "You talk about explaining, you scum, when I caught you in my own parlor at three in the morning—you—"
The smile faded from Jimmy's face.
"Half a minute," he said. It might be that the ideal course would be to let the storm expend itself, and then to explain quietly the whole matter of Arthur Mifflin and the bet that had led to his one excursion into burglary; but he doubted it. Things—including his temper—had got beyond the stage of quiet explanations. McEachern would most certainly disbelieve his story. What would happen after that he did not know. A scene, probably: a melodramatic denunciation, at the worst, before the other guests; at the best, before Sir Thomas alone. He saw nothing but chaos beyond that. His story was thin to a degree, unless backed by witnesses, and his witnesses were three thousand miles away. Worse, he had not been alone in the policeman's parlor. A man who is burgling a house for a bet does not usually do it in the company of a professional burglar, well known to the police.