Question: “This is your big surprise.
(i) Where has this been said in the play?
(ii) What is the surprise?
Ans: (i) This line appears twice in the play. First, when the intruder reveals his intentions to Gerrard, and the second time, when Gerrard was going to reveal “the truth about himself to the intruder.
(ii) The surprise in the first case was that the intruder planned to kill and impersonate as Gerrard. He was a wanted criminal who has been on the run. He wanted to settle down as Gerrard because the latter matched his physical appearance, and lead a comfortable life free of all fears of being caught by the police. In the case of Gerrard, it was the fabricated story, wherein, he claims that he was a wanted criminal, who had murdered someone when things got sour. He tells the intruder that he himself was in hiding, as he was a crook and not a sunday-school teacher. He warns him by saying that if he kills him and takes over his place, he would be caught and hung because the person he would be in disguise, “Gerrard, was also wanted.