to blazon forth that prepared and unsolicited statement to PREVENT
accusation. Yet, as I said before, even that wretched attempt to
cover up your tracks was not enough. I still had to find that
overwhelming, impelling motive necessary to affect a man like you.
That motive I found in the strongest of all impulses--Love, I
suppose you would call it," he added bitterly, "that night you
called! You had brought the most conclusive proofs of it on your
sleeve."

"But--" I almost screamed.

"Silence!" he thundered. "I know what you would say. You would
say that even if you had embraced some Young Person in a sealskin
coat, what had that to do with the robbery? Let me tell you, then,
that that sealskin coat represented the quality and character of
your fatal entanglement! You bartered your honor for it--that
stolen cigar case was the purchaser of the sealskin coat!

"Silence! Having thoroughly established your motive, I now proceed
to the commission of the crime itself. Ordinary people would have
begun with that--with an attempt to discover the whereabouts of the
missing object. These are not MY methods."

So overpowering was his penetration that, although I knew myself
innocent, I licked my lips with avidity to hear the further details
of this lucid exposition of my crime.

"You committed that theft the night I showed you the cigar case,
and after I had carelessly thrown it in that drawer. You were
sitting in that chair, and I had arisen to take something from that