He paused, a queer expression in his face.
“But I don’t understand how you knew, if you’ll excuse me, sir—how you suspected. Afterward, from the corridor, you saw our light when we were ready to come out; we thought you’d gone for good, of course.... But nothing was touched, sir, except—that is—of course—” He stumbled.
Quarrier silenced him with upraised hand.
“I didn’t suspect, Harrison—I knew,” he said. “And I heard, through the keyhole of that connecting door, the ticking of that watch of yours; it’s big enough. That helped, of course. But that was afterward. There was one little thing you overlooked, and, for the matter of that, so did I—nearly.”
There came the sound of heavy footsteps on the concrete flooring of the corridor, voices: His guards, summoned by Quarrier’s “light-bombs.”
Quarrier continued, as if he had not heard:
“Well—it was right under my eyes, but I almost missed it, at that. I saw it moving, and I knew that something must have made it move.”
He paused, with a faint grimace of recollection.
“You see—you had your hat on in the office, didn’t you?... Yes, I thought so. You’re a bit deaf, too.... Well, you should have been—to Marston. But that’s past. And you have a good, thick crop of hair—so far.”
Quarrier smiled frostily. “Well, you struck against it and set it moving—that was all. You never noticed it. Because it was—the chain from the electrolier, Harrison, and that was how—”