He heard the shrill chatter of Sing Tong Fat as he let Peret out of the house, and the slam of the front door when he closed it behind him. Heaving a sigh of relief, Deweese threw himself into a chair. The strain through which he had just come had been terrific. Ordinarily, he would have found a battle of wits with the detective much to his liking, for it was for just such games as this that he lived. But his experience with the Whispering Thing had left his nerves in such a state that he felt he had been no match for the Frenchman.
Nevertheless, now that he was at least temporarily unembarrassed by the detective’s presence, his brain began to function more normally and he set about evolving plans to extricate himself from his hazardous position. What a devil the Frenchman was! The man’s powers of deduction smacked of the supernatural. And yet—
He knitted his brow. Recalling to his mind his own blundering, it was not so difficult, after all, to perceive how the detective had arrived at his conclusions. He, Deweese, had laid his plans so carefully, that he had believed detection impossible. But now, viewing the working out of his plan in retrospection, he could see where he had erred, and cursed himself for his carelessness. His blunders, as Peret had implied, had been too obvious to escape notice. Should not the remarkable accuracy of Peret’s reasoning, therefore, be attributed to chance rather than to genius? The accursed dying speech of the scientist had given him the key to the mystery, and it was certainly only an ill chance that had led him to be on hand to hear it. With such a clue to work on, he reasoned, the solving of the case had simply been a matter of routine. Without this clue, the detective would have been lost. The fact that he himself had been attacked by the Whispering Thing would have shielded him from suspicion.
As he thought of his chance encounter with the bat, he shuddered. The accident in itself proved his carelessness. It had indeed almost proved his death. As Peret had said, he had been a fool to linger near the scene of his crime, but he had been so sure, so confident, that he had done his work too well to fear detection. As for Peret—well, his very frankness proved that he was something of a fool. Who but an idiot would have exposed his hand when he knew that his opponent held the strongest cards!
Of course, there was a possibility that the Frenchman was holding something back, but what if he was? Was he, Count Vincent di Dalfonzo, “mystery man” of a hundred aliases and acknowledged by the police to be the cleverest international crook outside of prison bars, to be deprived of his liberty and a fortune by an imbecile of a private detective?
He laughed, and his laugh did not sound pleasant. After all, he had the formula, and the game was not yet lost. His blunders had not been as bad as they might have been. He would have been arrested at once, he argued, had Peret believed that there was even the slightest chance of convicting him. It only remained for him to make one imperative move, and then sit tight. The Frenchman was bluffing, or perhaps he was laying another of his diabolical traps. Well, he should see!
After fortifying himself with a stiff drink of whisky from the flask in the table drawer, he tapped the hand-bell on the table, and Sing Tong Fat, as if he had been awaiting the summons, entered the room with noiseless tread.
“Did you let that blankety-blank Frenchman out?” demanded Deweese.
“Tchèe, tchée,” chattered Sing Tong Fat. “He gone. Me watchee him glo dlown stleet. He allee samee tam fool clazy man. He say he blowee topee head off. Hoi, hoi.” He drew one of the silken sleeves of his blouse across his face and looked at his master anxiously. “He say polis alle lound house in stleet, Fan-Fu. He talkee allee samee Victrolee—”
“The house is still under surveillance, is it?” observed Deweese, wrinkling his brow. “Well, so much the better. We work best when we work cautiously, and we are not likely to be incautious when we know we are watched.”