"You think you can?" she asked.
"Can! Certainly I can! Why, it's too preposterous to stand for a moment! We've only to prove an alibi—to show that you were somewhere else, you know, at the time the crime was committed—and the whole business falls to pieces in an instant. You can do that easily, can't you?"
The color had gone from her cheeks again, and she buried her face in her hands.
"I don't know," she murmured indistinctly. "I must think. Oh, don't let it come to that!"
I was puzzled—confounded. With her good name, her life, perhaps, in the balance, she wanted time to think! I could see that my chief was astonished, too.
"I'll try to keep it from coming to that, since you wish it," he said slowly. "I'll not be able to call you, then, to testify in your own behalf—and that always hurts. But I hope the case will break down at once—I believe it will. At any rate, don't worry. I want you to rely on me."
She looked up at him again, smiling.
"I shall," she murmured softly. "I'm sure I could desire no better champion!"
Well, plainly, if he won this case he would win something else besides. I think even the policeman in the corner saw it, for he turned away with a discretion rare in policemen, and pretended to stare out of the window.
I don't know what my chief would have said—his lips were trembling so he could not speak for the moment—and just then there came a tap at the door, and the coroner's clerk looked in.