“He's not here now, but I believe you'll find him at the Sesame Club this evening about eight o'clock,” and the receiver snapped up. Evidently the domestic affairs of Henry were not yet running smoothly.
In the Sesame lounge at seven-thirty Mr. Deane presented himself. Mr. Thompson was in the writing-room, he was told.
Mr. Deane produced his card, and with it the tale of the motor collision.
“I've met your father on the links this afternoon. Major Thompson very kindly gave me your address here—he's certain that you can give Miss Leslie an alibi for the hour in question at any rate. That would clear matters up a great deal.”
“Of course she wasn't in our car. She wasn't in any car,” grunted young Thompson; “no such luck. We were—having tea with friends,” he finished lamely.
Mr. Deane raised an eyebrow.
“The Blacks' house has been shut up for three weeks.”
The young man swung around on his chair.
“It's a perfectly rotten affair,” he burst out at length; “my stepmother thinks I ought to've let Miss Leslie go out on the river by herself. But, you see, I knew,—I mean, I've known her all my life—besides, the weather didn't look half bad when we started”; and then followed a tale of a wilful young female dragging the reluctant male into boat and tea-shop, where they partook of a chilly tea—their friends' house proving shut up—and back home through the pouring rain. The afternoon had apparently not gained any retrospective charm in the young man's memory, but Pointer got the clue he was after. Miss Leslie—according to young Thompson—hoped to meet Malcolm Black, to whom she had been engaged before she had taken to the stage. Though the family were away, she had seemed quite confident that the house would be open, and that they would find Malcolm on the little island summer-house which belonged to them.
When Mr. Deane had dexterously turned the young man inside out, he left him, soothed by the sympathy of one man of the world for another, and quite unaware of the operation to which he had been subjected. As for himself, he had a possibly true explanation of those drenched garments, over which he and Watts had paused more than a moment during their investigation of all the wardrobes of the hotel.