"Ha!" my eccentric friend broke in, with a chuckle, "then you have held on to that theory, have you?"
"There was no other possible!" I retorted.
"But he was discharged."
I shrugged my shoulders under pretence of being unconvinced. As a matter of fact, all I wanted was to make the funny creature talk.
"A flimsy alibi," I said coldly.
"And a want of sympathy," he rejoined.
"What has sympathy got to do with a brutal assault on a defenceless old man? You can't deny that Leighton had something, at any rate, to do with it?"
"I did not mean sympathy for the guilty," he argued, "but for the women who were the principal witnesses in the case."
"I don't see——" I protested.
"No, but I do. I understood, and in a great measure I sympathised."