“Why, I opened the door, of course, and this man was standing there, and he had a revolver in his hand, and he stuck it against my—my stomach, and pushed me back into the room where Mr. Coplin was, and he shot Mr. Coplin, and—”
“When I saw him and the revolver in his hand,” Coplin took the story away from his servant; “it gave me a fright, sort of, and I let my cigar case slip out of my hand. Trying to catch it again—no sense in ruining good cigars even if you are being robbed—he must have thought I was trying to get a gun or something. Anyway he shot me in the leg. My wife and Phyllis came running in when they heard the shot, and he pointed the revolver at them, took all their jewels, and had them empty my pockets. Then he made them drag me back into Phyllis’s room, into the closet, and he locked us all in there. And, mind you, he don’t say a word all this time, not a word—just makes motions with his gun and his left hand.
“How bad did he bang your leg?”
“Depends on whether you want to believe me or the doctor. He says it’s nothing much. Just a scratch, he says, but it’s my leg that’s shot, not his!”
“Did he say anything when you opened the door?” I asked the maid.
“No, sir.”
“Did any of you hear him say anything while he was here?”
None of them had.
“What happened after he locked you in the closet?”
“Nothing that we knew about,” Coplin said; “until McBirney and a policeman came and let us out.”
“Who’s McBirney?”