Chapter Sixteen.
In a Tight Corner.
I was caught red-handed—caught as neatly as any bona-fide burglar who ever picked a lock!
I had opened the trunk of a fellow visitor with a skeleton key; I had been caught in the very act of pilfering the contents. Indeed, at that very moment I held in my left hand a tiny leather box containing Engström’s diamond tie-pin and studs, while with my right hand I had been delving into his big trunk. Never was a capture neater or more complete. And, with the menace of the big revolver in Engström’s hand, and knowing something of my captor, I knew better than to attempt a rush for escape. I should never have reached the door alive!
“Well, and what does this mean?” harshly demanded the Swedish engineer, in bad French, still covering me with his pistol. “And who are you?”
Had Engström suspected who I really was, I knew he would have shot me out of hand and chanced all consequences: indeed, he would have had little to fear, for there would have been nothing more than a casual inquiry into the shooting of a thief caught red-handed. Moreover, dead men tell no tales, and Engström would have had no difficulty whatever in excusing himself by some hastily concocted story that I had attacked him as soon as he found me plundering his trunk. My disguise saved me, and it was evident he had no suspicion that I was anything but a common thief.
I broke instantly into a torrent of excuses, putting down the little jewel box and the papers with as guilty an air as I could assume. The situation obviously required both tact and cunning, for I realised that I was in a tight corner and that a slip would cost me my life. I pleaded desperate poverty; I was an honest workman driven to evil courses by want; I am afraid I even invented a story of a wholly mythical wife and family in the last stage of starvation. Finally, I roundly promised amendment of my ways if he would but let me go. “Forgive me this time,” I implored. “Do forgive me—this will ruin me.”
“You dog of a thief, I have caught you stealing from my room,” was his only reply. “I shall call the manager,” and he slammed the door and pressed the electric bell. “Send the manager here at once,” he commanded the messenger who answered the bell.