“Well, I was wrong, wasn’t I?” parried the Doctor. “You can look for yourself. That safe is empty.”
The detective brushed his evasive answer aside.
“You were up in this room earlier tonight,” he said in tones of apparent certainty.
“No, I couldn’t get up!” the doctor still insisted, with strange violence for a man who had already admitted such damning knowledge.
The detective’s face was a study in disbelief.
“You know where that money is, Wells, and I’m going to find it!”
This last taunt seemed to goad the Doctor beyond endurance.
“Good God!” he shouted recklessly. “Do you suppose if I knew where it is, I’d be here? I’ve had plenty of chances to get away! No, you can’t pin anything on me, Anderson! It isn’t criminal to have known that room is here.”
He paused, trembling with anger and, curiously enough, with an anger that seemed at least half sincere.
“Oh, don’t be so damned virtuous!” said the detective brutally. “Maybe you haven’t been upstairs but—unless I miss my guess, you know who was!”