Roberts: ‘Yes.’
Willis: ‘Ah, ha, ha, ha! I, hi, hi, hi! O, ho, ho, ho!’ He yields to a series of these gusts and paroxysms, bowing up and down, and stamping to and fro, and finally sits down exhausted, and wipes the tears from his cheeks. ‘Really, this thing will kill me. What are you going to do about it, Roberts?’
Roberts, with profound dejection and abysmal solemnity: ‘I don’t know, Willis. Don’t you see that it must have been—that I must have robbed—Mr. Bemis?’
Willis: ‘Bemis!’ After a moment for tasting the fact. ‘Why, so it was! Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! And was poor old Bemis that burly ruffian? that bloodthirsty gang of giants? that—that—oh, Lord! oh, Lord!’ He bows his head upon his chair-back in complete exhaustion, demanding, feebly, as he gets breath for the successive questions, ‘What are you going to d-o-o-o? What shall you s-a-a-a-y? How can you expla-a-ain it?’
Roberts: ‘I can do nothing. I can say nothing. I can never explain it. I must go to Mr. Bemis and make a clean breast of it; but think of the absurdity—the ridicule!’
Willis, after a thoughtful silence: ‘Oh, it isn’t that you’ve got to think of. You’ve got to think of the old gentleman’s sense of injury and outrage. Didn’t you hear what he said—that he would have handed over his dearest friend, his own brother, to the police?’
Roberts: ‘But that was in the supposition that his dearest friend, his own brother, had intentionally robbed him. You can’t imagine, Willis—’
Willis: ‘Oh, I can imagine a great many things. It’s all well enough for you to say that the robbery was a mistake; but it was a genuine case of garotting as far as the assault and taking the watch go. He’s a very pudgicky old gentleman.’
Roberts: ‘He is.’
Willis: ‘And I don’t see how you’re going to satisfy him that it was all a joke. Joke? It wasn’t a joke! It was a real assault and a bona fide robbery, and Bemis can prove it.’