"After that was over I set about covering my tracks. The first part was the worst. Before the maids came back I had to get Simon stowed away for the night--no time to bury him then of course, and I had to get into his clothes, shave, and learn the lie of the house and all that. I did it all right and came down to breakfast next morning and passed muster with the servants, and never a suspicion raised!" "There was a little," remarked Carrington, "but never enough." "Not enough was good enough!" "I am not quite certain of that," said Carrington. "However, go on. Your next bunker was the office." The prisoner nodded. "It took some nerve," he said complacently, "and I'm free to confess that to begin with I always had a beastly feeling that some one was watching me and spotting something that didn't look quite right, but, good Lord, keeping my head the way I kept it, there was nothing to worry about! Who would ever think that the Simon Rattar who walked into his office and grunted at his clerks on Wednesday morning, wasn't the same Simon Rattar who walked in and grunted on Tuesday morning? And then I had one tremendous pull in knowing all the ropes from old days. Simon was a conservative man, nothing was ever changed--not even the clerks, so I had the whole routine at my fingers. And he was an easy man to imitate too. That was where I scored again. I daresay I have inherited some of the same tricks myself. I know I found them come quite easy--the stare and the silence and the grunts and the rest of them. And then I always had more brains than Simon and could pick up business quicker. You should have heard me making that ass Malcolm Cromarty, and the Farmond girl, and this hangman with the glass eye tell me all about themselves and what their business was, without their ever suspecting they were being pumped! For, mind you, I'd never set eyes on Malcolm Cromarty or the Farmond girl before in my life! No, it wasn't at the office I had the nastiest time. It was burying the body that night." The boastful smile died off his lips and for a moment he shivered a little. "What happened about that?" enquired Carrington keenly. Rattar's voice instinctively fell a little. "When I got home that afternoon I found he wasn't quite dead after all!" "That accounts for it!" murmured Carrington. "For what?" "Your maid heard him moving." The prisoner seemed to have recovered from his passing emotion. "And I told her it was a rat, and she swallowed it!" he laughed. "Well, he didn't move for long, and I had fixed up quite a good scheme for getting him out of the house. A man was to call for old papers. I even did two voices talking in the hall to make the bluff complete! Not being able to get his ring off his finger rather worried me, but I put that right by an advertisement in the paper saying I'd lost it!" He was arrested by the look on Carrington's face. "What happened?" he exclaimed. "Do you mean to say that gave me away?"