which weren't especially serious; although nobody need expect to get in
the way of Jeremy's fist and feel comfortable for several hours
afterwards. The cut made in the second man's neck by broken glass
needed several stitches, but the third man was only winded from having
been sat on, and of course he was much more sorry for himself than
either of the other two--a fact that Grim noted.

There was another noticeable circumstance that shed light on human
nature and Grim's knowledge of it. They were all three eager to tell
their story, although not necessarily the same story; whereas Narayan
Singh, who knew that every word he might say would be believed
implicitly, was in no hurry to tell his at all.

Now when you're dealing with Eastern and near-Eastern people of the sort
who lie instinctively (and it may be that this applies to the West as
well) it's a good plan to establish, if you can, a basis of truth for
them to build their tale on; because the truth acts like acid on
untruth. They're going to lie in any case; but lies told without any
reference to truth knit better than when invented at a moment's notice
to explain away another's straightforward statement. There's a
plausible theory that culprits taken in the act are best examined in
secret, one by one, in ignorance of all the evidence against them.

The wise method is to let them hear the evidence against themselves.
Nine times out of ten they will accept that as unanswerable, and strive
to twist its meaning or smother it under a mass of lies. But the truth
they have accepted, as I have said, works just like acid and destroys
their argument almost as fast as they build it up. In the few cases
when that doesn't happen, they break down altogether and confess.