“That’s a lie,” Devlin snarled, “I’ve figured it out lying in this damned cot. You saw I wasn’t badly hurt and you knew some of the boys would fetch me in later. You thought you’d do a hero stunt and get a decoration and you reckoned I’d be grateful and let up on you. That was clever but not clever enough for me. I see through it. You’ve got away with out-guessing the other feller so far but I’m one jump ahead of you in this.” He paused for breath, “I’ve got you fixed, Mister Anthony Trent, and don’t you forget it. You think I’m bluffing I suppose.”
“I think you’re exciting yourself unduly,” Trent said quietly. “Take it up when you are well.”
“You’re afraid to hear what I know,” Devlin sneered. “You’ve got to hear it sometime, so why not now?”
Trent spoke as one does to a child or a querulous invalid.
“Well, what is it?” he demanded.
“Never heard of any one named Austin, did you?”
“It’s not an unusual name,” Trent admitted. But he was no longer uninterested. Conington Warren’s butler was so called. And this Austin had met him face to face on the stairway of his master’s house on the night that he had taken Conington Warren’s loose cash and jewels.
“He’s out here,” Devlin said and looked hard at Trent to see what effect the news would have.
“You forget I don’t know whom,” Trent reminded him. “What Austin?”
“You know,” Devlin snapped, “the Warren butler. I was on that case and he recognized me not a week ago and asked me who you were. He’s seen you, too. We put two and two together and it spells the pen for you. He was English and although he was over age the British are polite that way. If he said he was forty-one they said they guessed he was forty-one. I went to see him in a hospital before he ‘went west’ and he told me all about it.”