"Your maid heard him moving."
The prisoner seemed to have recovered from his passing emotion.
"And I told her it was a rat, and she swallowed it!" he laughed. "Well, he didn't move for long, and I had fixed up quite a good scheme for getting him out of the house. A man was to call for old papers. I even did two voices talking in the hall to make the bluff complete! Not being able to get his ring off his finger rather worried me, but I put that right by an advertisement in the paper saying I'd lost it!"
He was arrested by the look on Carrington's face.
"What happened?" he exclaimed. "Do you mean to say that gave me away?"
"Those superfluous precautions generally give people away."
"But how?"
"It doesn't matter now. You'll learn later. What next?"
"Next?" said Rattar. "Well, I just went on keeping my head and bluffing people" he broke off, looked at Superintendent Sutherland, and gave a short laugh. "I only lost my nerve a bit once, and that was when the glass-eyed hangman butted in and said he was going to get down a detective. It struck me then it was time I was off—and what's more, I started!"
The superintendent's mouth fell open.
"You—you weren't the man" he began.
"Yes," scoffed the prisoner, "I was the man
