"Is that so? Well, just to play the game fair, suppose I tell you some of the things I've got on you--some of them. But before I start I'm going to tell you that your big mistake was in coming back to where you'd left that nice new yellow overcoat of yours. Interested, eh?" he said, reading the expression that came into Trencher's face in spite of Trencher's efforts. "All right then, I'll go on. You had a good prospect of getting out of town before daylight, but you chucked your chance when you came back to the Clarenden a little while ago. But at that I was expecting you; in fact, I don't mind telling you that I was standing behind some curtains not fifteen feet from that check room when you showed up. I could have grabbed you then, of course, but just between you and me I didn't want to run the risk of having to split the credit fifty-fifty with any bull, in harness or out of it, that might come butting in. The neighbourhood was lousy with cops and plain-clothes men hunting for whoever it was that bumped off Sonntag; they're still there, I guess, hunting without knowing who it is they're looking for, and without having a very good description of you, either. I was the only fellow that had the right dope, and that came about more by accident than anything else. So I took a chance, myself. I let you get away and then I trailed you--in a taxi. "All the time you was on that street car I was riding along right behind you, and I came up these steps here not ten feet behind you. I wanted you all for myself and I've got you all by myself." "You don't hate yourself, exactly, do you?" said Trencher. "Well, without admitting anything--because there's nothing to admit--I'd like to know, if you don't mind, how you dope it out that I had anything to do with Sonntag's being killed--that is if you're not lying about him being killed?" "I don't mind," said Murtha blithely. "It makes quite a tale, but I can boil it down. I wasn't on duty to-night--by rights this was a night off for me. I had a date at the Clarenden at eleven-thirty to eat a bite with a brother-in-law of mine and a couple of friends of his--a fellow named Simons and a fellow named Parker, from Stamford. "I judge it's Parker's benny and dicer you're wearing now. "Well, anyhow, on my way to the Clarenden about an hour or so ago I butt right into the middle of all the hell that's being raised over this shooting in Thirty-ninth Street. One of the precinct plain-clothes men that's working on the case tells me a tall guy in a brown derby hat and a short yellow overcoat is supposed to have pulled off the job. That didn't mean anything to me, and even if it had I wouldn't have figured you out as having been mixed up in it. Anyway, it's no lookout of mine. So I goes into the Clarenden and has a rarebit and a bottle of beer with my brother-in-law and the others.