collar, which had always looked grotesque on him. To wear it now would have been an unpleasant parody; perhaps he felt that or perhaps he didn't, but in any case his scrawny bare neck stuck at some length out of a dead-black costume. He was as limp and weedy and blue-chinned as ever. Though his shrewd eyes behind the glasses were a little shaky with liquor, he was sober in the sense that he had full possession of all his faculties — possibly too much so. He seemed upheld and blunted by the superiority of the young intellectual. He looked on us with somewhat glazed aloofness, and smiled. The short, lank black hair stuck to his forehead, as though he had been dousing his head to cool it.
Then he saw me, and I think it jolted him a little. So far as I could judge he did not recognize me; but he knew he had seen me before, and that a game was being played somewhere. I did not say anything, or he would have spotted me. It seemed best to let him wait a few minutes first. Yet the fellow had his nerve well about him.
'Sit down,' H.M. said, without preamble. 'You're a fine feller, now, aren't you?'
Serpos almost laughed. The wary, twisting gleam was behind his eyes again; he was cool, and almost contemptuous. 'Really, old boy,' he said, 'do you think you can ruffle me with any such nonsense as this? Stuff It is childish. I had expected better things of you.'
H.M. eyed him down his nose.
'I hear the echo of some plays-' he said vaguely, and scowled. 'You goin' to act like that, son? You ain't afraid of arrest?'
'No.'
'You're almost the only person in the world who ain't, then. Why not?'
'Let's get this straight,' said Serpos with a cool candour. 'Because it wouldn't do, that's why. It wouldn't do at all. I'm a heritage from an old friend of Charters's; his old friend's son; delicate health; nice young fellow, first misstep. And I stole only counterfeit money. Oh, no; I shan't be arrested. I shall get the sack, of course. But then I shall go on and do better for myself, for I have ingratiating manners. Understand? — I suppose I must listen to your questions, because I have no choice. But I am not going to pay any attention to them when you use such childish tricks as threats of arrest.'
Now this is the sort of talk that makes you want to hit a man. And it was also a very dangerous game to play with H.M. of all people. But H.M. remained stolid.
'Well, d'ye see, the arrest part of it is rather out of my jurisdiction. But, whatever happens, you're goin' to look an awful damn fool, son.'
`Stuff! Nor with that sort of talk either.'
'I know, I know; but this ain't a threat. It's only a reconstruction of what happened. Look here: you worked up a disguise-and-cut-and-run scheme as fancy as any in a thriller. If you'd scooped a sackful of real money, it would 'a' been high crime; as it stands it's only comic. But that's not all. You broke down when a bogus copper only touched you on the shoulder, and in the first couple of hours of your criminal career you got shut up in a lavatory while an inspector walked off with your bag and your shirt. In short, you let yourself be bamboozled even out of counterfeit money. Your inspirin' personality may smooth things over and let people pardon you for thieving. But there's one thing that'll stay with you. I don't mind crooks, myself. I got several in my employ as it is. I don't care whether they're good Christians. But I do care whether they're good crooks.'
Serpos made an assenting gesture.
'In order,' he suggested, 'to spare you the necessity of being a good detective? I quite see the point, of course. And I could also ask-having learned most of the story of what has happened tonight — whether, in the matter of foolish behaviour, there is much to choose between you and me?' He smiled, with ineffable calm. 'Oh, no, my friend. Your attitude is very ingenious and amusing, but you must see that I am not taken in by it. Not for a minute.'
Again Serpos considered.
'It's to be admitted that I made a mistake. I am not bound to explain anything to you: but I submit here that it was a reasonable mistake.'
'I dunno,' growled H.M., inspecting his fingers. He was very gentle. 'That's the one part that'll be so hard for everyone to swallow — why you thought that slush was real money. Grantin' that you were away at the time Willoughby was nabbed, still you must have heard something about the case. You were right here. You surely didn't think that all that money belonged to Charters, and that he just brought it home casually and shoved it into his safe? Didn't you ask any questions at all? Any copper on point-duty from here to Bristol could 'a' told you what it was. Well, then? Why did it have to be you that made the bloomer?'
Serpos appeared to consider this from every angle, like a cat putting out its paw to touch something on the floor.
'Yes, I must tell you that,' he said. 'It is not that I knew too little about the case. The mistake was made because I knew, or thought I knew, too much about it. Perhaps you will allow me to ask Sergeant Davis a few questions?'
'Yes. Sure. Go ahead.'
Davis glowered. down on Serpos, but he stood at attention again.
'Sergeant,' said the latter, with a shrewd and wary eye out, 'you were present at the capture of Willoughby, weren't you: when he was killed resisting arrest?'
'I was,' growled the sergeant, conquering a disinclination to answer.
'Ah, good. Was anyone else captured besides Willoughby?' 'No.'
'But it was known or believed, was it not,' pursued Serpos, with an able theatrical consciousness that he had the scene in hand, 'that there was a Willoughby gang?'
` A man,' said the servant obstinately, 'can't design, and print, and pass the stuff all by himself. There's got to be others with him. That's all I know. Or any of us.'
The Adam's apple moved up and down in Serpos's scrawny neck as he swallowed and cleared his throat delicately.
'A little study of criminology, sergeant,' he observed, 'wouldn't hurt your work at all. You knew Willoughby was an American, didn't you? Yes. Were you acquainted with his nick-name on the other side?'
At this point Johnson Stone sat forward in his chair His fist was held half-way in the air, as at an access of illumination, and he spoke to H.M. in an eager, throaty voice.
'Sorry to butt in right here,' he said; 'but I've just thought of something. Yes, indeed. Do you mind if I have that paper of mine back for a minute, to add something to it?'
Without a word H.M. picked up one of the prescription-blanks and passed it across to him: but H.M. did not take his eyes off Serpos. Serpos, who was sitting near Stone, directed a glazed look at him and turned his attention back after a brief glance at Stone's moving pencil. It seemed to me that Serpos was struggling with some inner enjoyment, which, if it had not been for the whisky which gave him his poise, might have been inner fear.
'Willoughby was called Cash-Down,' Serpos resumed, 'and it remained Cash-Down until it became Cash-In. He liked the ready. He kept the ready by him. It appears that he did not like banks, and he was always afraid of his associates — whoever they were. He was supposed to have a very large sum close at band. Well!' Serpos's face darkened. 'I hear that they have caught Willoughby. I see a large sum of money being carefully put away with all the numbers noted. God's truth, I am not a police secretary; I am a private secretary; I am not admitted to the Eleusinian mysteries of policecraft. I supposed, and I think naturally, that they had found Willoughby's real money. I did not ask, since I hardly wanted suspicion at the beginning, and what I thought I knew I was not supposed to know at all. It was a mistake — but, I again submit, a natural mistake. And that, my friends, is all I think I need tell you.'
'Does you good to get it off your chest, though, don't it?' asked H.M. The corners of his mouth were turned down. 'Lemme see if there's something that don't go with this. Last night you were nabbed at Moreton Abbot railway station by somebody you thought was a real policeman. You broke down. Then you tumbled to the fact that it wasn't a real policeman. Whereupon, son, you turned nasty. If I got the story correctly, you said somethin' like, `You never came from the police. You never came from Charters or Merrivale. I know where you come from. And you know all about it.' — Uh-huh. You thought, didn't you, it was a member of the Willoughby gang hidin' you up for the money?'
Serpos shrugged his shoulders with fluent motion.
'It explains matters, doesn't it?'
