"Why," said he, "I sold the last tenant up, and nearly took the 'ouse myself instead o' the place I got. It was what first attracted me to the neighhour'ood." "Why couldn't you tell us the truth before?" I demanded, but my warmth merely broadened his grin. "Why should I? It sometimes pays to seem more at a loss than you are." "It won't in this case," said I through my teeth. But for all my austerity, and all his bonds, the prisoner continued to regard me with quiet but most disquieting amusement. "I'm not so sure of that," he observed at length. "It rather paid, to my way of thinking, when Raffles went off to cash my cheque, and left you to keep an eye on me." "Oh, did it!" said I, with pregnant emphasis, and my right hand found comfort in my jacket pocket, on the butt of the old brute's own weapon. "I only mean," he rejoined, in a more conciliatory voice, "that you strike me as being more open to reason than your flash friend." I said nothing to that. "On the other 'and," continued Levy, still more deliberately, as though he really was comparing us in his mind; "on the other _hand_" stooping to pick up what he had dropped, "you don't take so many risks. Raffles takes so many that he's bound to land you both in the jug some day, if he hasn't done it this time. I believe he has, myself. But it's no use hollering before you're out o' the wood." I agreed, with more confidence than I felt. "Yet I wonder he never thought of it," my prisoner went on as if to himself. "Thought of what?" "Only the clock. He must've seen it before, if you never did; you don't tell me this little bit o' kidnapping was a sudden idea! It's all been thought out and the ground gone over, and the clock seen, as I say. Seen going. Yet it never strikes our flash friend that a going clock's got to be wound up once a week, and it might be as well to find out which day!" "How do you know he didn't?" "Because this 'appens to be the day!" And Levy lay back in the bunk with the internal chuckle that I was beginning to know so well, but had little thought to hear from him in his present predicament. It galled me the more because I felt that Raffles would certainly not have heard it in my place. But at least I had the satisfaction of flatly and profanely refusing to believe the prisoner's statement. "That be blowed for a bluff!" was more or less what I said. "It's too much of a coincidence to be anything else." "The odds are only six to one against it," said Levy, indifferently. "One of you takes them with his eyes open. It seems rather a pity that the other should feel bound to follow him to certain ruin. But I suppose you know your own business best." "At all events," I boasted, "I know better than to be bluffed by the most obvious lie I ever heard in my life. You tell me how you know about the man coming to wind the clock, and I may listen to you."