It may have been my imagination, but I thought that George started at these words. However, he said in a cool, steady voice:
"Ah, yes, I had forgotten that. We stopped a moment to get some violets for Miss Waring."
"And after the matinée you drove home with Miss Waring?"
"Yes," said Lawrence; "and left her at her own door. She invited me to come back to dinner, and I said I would. As the Warings' house is only two blocks away from the Pembroke's, I thought I would run in for a few moments to see Janet. I did this, and Janet seemed glad to see me, but Uncle Robert was so crusty and irritable that I did not care to stay very long. I left there about six, came back here to my room, and dressed for dinner. From here I went directly back to the Warings', reaching there at 7.30, which was the dinner hour. There were other guests, and after dinner there was music in the drawing-room. I stayed until eleven o'clock. As I said good-night to Miss Waring, the clock chanced to be striking eleven, so I'm sure of the time. From the Warings' I came right back here on a Broadway car. I reached this house at 11.25, it having taken me about twenty-five minutes to come down from Sixtieth Street and to walk over here from Broadway."
"How do you know you reached this house at exactly 11.25?" Fleming Stone asked this with such an air of cordial interest that there was no trace of cross-questioning about it.
"Because," said George easily, "my watch had stopped—it had run down during the evening—and so as I came into this house I asked the hall boy what time it was, that I might set my watch. He looked at the office clock, and told me. Of course you can verify this by the boy."
"I've no desire to verify your statement, Mr. Lawrence," said Stone, with his winning smile. "It's a bad habit, this letting a watch run down. Do you often do it?"
"No," said Lawrence; "almost never. Indeed, I don't know when it has happened before."
"And then what next, Mr. Lawrence?"
"Then the hall boy brought me up in the elevator, I let myself into my rooms, and went at once to bed."