“You police are famous for your blunders. I’ll save you from making another.”
“That’s kind.”
“I killed Edwin Lawrence.”
They looked at me, then at each other, smiling. The inspector’s colleague gave a short, dry laugh.
“It’s a little too thin,” he said.
“I repeat that I killed Edwin Lawrence.”
The inspector gazed at me with twinkling eyes.
“What do you propose to gain by that?”
“Gain? Nothing; except, I suppose, the gallows. But I don’t care. Life has no longer any charms for me, with this—this upon my soul. His blood is on my hands. I admit it.”
“With a view, I presume, to getting his blood off the hands of somebody else, eh?”