Mr. X. No, you don’t—sit down in your place at the table where you were before—then we’ll talk a bit first.
Mr. Y.[Sits down after he has taken up a black coat.] What, what’s going to happen now?
Mr. X.[Looks in the mirror at the back of MR. Y.] Now it’s as clear as possible.
Mr. Y.[Nervously.] What do you see so strange?
Mr. X. I see in the looking-glass that you are a thief—a simple, common or garden thief. A few minutes ago, when you sat there in your white shirt, I just noticed the books were out of order a bit in my bookcase, but I couldn’t notice in what way, as I had to listen to you and observe you. But now that you’ve become antipathetic to me my eyes have grown sharper, and now that you’ve on your black coat, which affords a color foil in the red backs of the books, which there wasn’t before when your red braces were showing, I see that you’ve been and read your forgery story out of Bernheim’s treatise on suggestion, and have put the book back upside down. So you stole the story as well. Now that’s why I think that I’m right in drawing the deduction that you committed your crime because you needed either the necessities or luxuries of life.
Mr. Y. Out of necessity! If you only knew!
Mr. X. If you only knew in what necessity I have lived, and live still. But that’s got nothing to do with it. But you’ve done your stretch, that’s nearly certain, but it was in America, because it was American prison life that you described; and another thing is almost equally certain: that you haven’t done your term here.
Mr. Y. How can you say that?
Mr. X. Wait till the inspector comes, then get to know. [MR. Y. gets up.] Look here, now! The first time I mentioned the inspector, in connection with a thunderbolt, you wanted to clear out. Besides, when a man has served in prison he will never go to a windmill every day and look at it, or post himself behind a window-pane—in one word, you are both a punished and an unpunished criminal. And that’s why you were so unusually difficult to get at. [Pause.]
Mr. Y.[Absolutely cowed.] May I go now?