"No, you red-handed botch! Worse than even if you killed Leigh, who hasn't been all straight. But you have killed an innocent man. A man you never saw or heard of in all your life until last night. A man that came into Leigh's place, privately, through a third door in the mews, and wound up his clock for him, in the window, and nodded to the Hanover bar people, as Leigh used to do, and who was so like Leigh himself, hump and all, barring that he was taller, that their own mothers would not know one from the other. Leigh hired him, so that he might be able to go to Birmingham and places on _our_ business, and seem to be in London and at his own place, if it became necessary to prove he had not been in Birmingham, if it became necessary to prove an alibi. And you, you blundering-headed fool, go and shoot the very man Leigh had hired to help our business! You're a useful pal, you are! You're a good working mate, you are! Are you proud of yourself? Eh? You not only put your head into the halter of your own free will, and out of the cleverness of your own brains, but you round on a chap who was a pal after all. You go having snap shots, you do, and you bag a comrade, a man who did no one any harm, a man who was in the swim! Oh, you are a nice, useful, tidy working pal, you are! A useful, careful mate! I wonder you didn't shoot me, and say you did it for the good of my health, and out of kindness to me. Anyway, I'm heartily sorry it wasn't yourself you shot, last night. No one would have been sorry for that, and the country would have saved the ten pounds to Jack Ketch for hanging you, and the cost of a new rope!"
"Eh?" cried Stamer, not that he did not hear and understand, but in order that he might get the story re-told.
Timmons went over the principal points again.
The burglar listened quite unmoved.
"You take it coolly enough, anyhow?"
"Why not? It was an accident."
"An accident! An accident!" cried Timmons, drawing up in front of Stamer and looking at him in perplexity.
"Well, what could be plainer, Mr. Timmons? Of course, it was an accident. Why should I hurt a man who never hurt me?"
"But you did."
"They have to prove that. They _can't_ prove _I_ rounded on a pal. I can get a hundred witnesses to character."