Anyhow, I shall be in a position to prove that I am not
implicated in the murder of this unfortunate nincompoop.' He
pointed, with a strange, scornful gesture of his elbow, to the bed.
'And now, shall we go? Everyone is asleep, but there will be a
policeman within call of the watchman in the portico. I am at your
service. Let us go down together, Mr Racksole. I give you my word
to go quietly.'
'Stay a moment,' said Theodore Racksole curtly; 'there is no hurry.
It won't do you any harm to forego another hour's sleep, especially
as you will have no work to do to-morrow. I have one or two more
questions to put to you.'
'Well?' Rocco murmured, with an air of tired resignation, as if to
say, 'What must be must be.'
'Where has Dimmock's corpse been during the last three or four
days, since he - died?'
'Oh!' answered Rocco, apparently surprised at the simplicity of the
question. 'It's been in my room, and one night it was on the roof;
once it went out of the hotel as luggage, but it came back the next
day as a case of Demerara sugar. I forgot where else it has been,
but it's been kept perfectly safe and treated with every
consideration.'
'And who contrived all these manoeuvres?' asked Racksole as
calmly as he could.
'I did. That is to say, I invented them and I saw that they were
carried out. You see, the suspicions of your police obliged me to
be particularly spry.
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