“I don’t, for sure, but I’m going to find out. If you haven’t got an air-tight alibi—it’s going to be trouble for yours!”
“I haven’t any alibi. Guilty people prepare alibis.”
“That’s all right. You’re cute enough to fix an alibi that don’t look to be fixed! But I’ll see through it. Here we are. Come along.”
“A little less dictating, please, Mr Prescott. Remember, I’m not under arrest.”
“Not yet—but soon!” was the retort as the two men entered the small, but exclusive, hotel where Manning Pollard made his home.
The doorman bowed, pleasantly, but not obsequiously, and Prescott went straight to the desk.
“I want to learn,” he said, straightforwardly, “all you can tell me of the movements of Mr Pollard tonight between six and seven o’clock.”
The clerk at the desk smiled at Pollard and gazed inquiringly at the other.
“Better tell him, Simpson,” said Pollard; “he’s a detective, and he’s a right to ask. I’m under a cloud—I think I may call it that—and he’s going to—well, clear me.”
Pollard’s smile flashed out, and the desk clerk, in his turn, smiled at the investigator.