"Oh, it ain't nonsense. Just look at it for a minute. Here's a man whose double motive is to prove that he didn't kill Canifest and he didn't kill Tait? Hey? He wants to do the one by makin' his arrival here earlier than it actually was, and the other by movin' the body. H'm. All right. If he really did kill Tait, then he knew when she died: that's not a very far-fetched assumption. Then why the blazes does he want to make the time he says he arrived here so nearly coincide with the time the woman was murdered? — carefully makin' it just a little earlier than she was killed? That's an incredibly fatheaded way of bringin' suspicion back to him, especially as after a car-drive from London a matter of twenty minutes or half-an-hour won't matter so much! Why did he say roughly three o'clock? Why didn't he make it earlier, and provide an alibi for both victims? — You instantly reply, 'Because Thompson heard him come in, and he couldn't lie.' That won't wash. He told his story long before he knew that, by a chance nobody in the world could anticipate, Thompson was awake with the toothache and could check up on him. He told that story deliberately, because…”
"Shall I read you a telegram?" inquired H. M.
"A telegram? What telegram?"
"From Canifest. I got it just before dinner. It's interestin' And this is what it says." H. M. drew the folded paper from his inside pocket. "I asked him, as a matter of fact, what time John Bohun had called on him at his home last night.
`WENT HOME," said Canifest, `JUST AFTER MORNING EDITION OF GLOBE-JOURNAL WENT TO PRESS, PRECISELY TWO FORTY-FIVE A.M. FOUND CALLER IN QUESTION WAITING AT SIDE DOOR AND TOOK HIM TO MY DEN. DO NOT KNOW WHAT TIME HE LEFT DUE TO HEART ATTACK YOU MAY UNDERSTAND, BUT AM CERTAIN NOT EARLIER THAN THREE-THIRTY.' "
H. M. tossed the slip of paper on the table.
"He said three o'clock," snapped H. M., "because he thought it was a safe time to admit he'd arrived here. As a matter of fact he didn't get here until an hour or two afterwards.:'
"But somebody got here!" shouted Willard. "Somebody drove in at ten minutes past three! Who was it?"
"The murderer," said H. M. "He's played in every bit of luck on the globe; he's been shielded by every trick of luck that nature and fate and craziness could invent; he's fooled us in front of our very eyes, but grab him, Masters!"
The voice ripped across the room as somebody flung open the door to the gallery. The door to the staircase banged open at the same time, and Inspector Potter plunged through at the same time that Masters appeared in the other. Masters said with quiet and deadly formality: