"Oh—half-past twelve, perhaps."
"At half-past twelve last night, David Prentiss left this apartment. He went down in the elevator?"
"I suppose so."
"And—just be patient, Fry." Hitchin smiled disarmingly. "Did the young man wear from this apartment the clothes he wore into this apartment?"
It was perfectly apparent to Anthony that the wretched fool had taken what he fancied to be a scent of some sort; it was equally clear that, in his present state of mind, Anthony would answer perhaps three more questions and then, losing himself completely, would smash the flower-vase over Hobart Hitchin's shining bald head solely as salve for his nerves!
Doubtless the long coat and the down-pulled cap had started him off—they were sufficiently mysterious-looking to impress a less sensitive imagination than Hitchin's. Whatever troubled the crime specialist, David Prentiss would have to be lied out of here in detail, lied home and lied to bed.
"Hitchin," said Anthony, "Heaven alone knows what concern of yours it can be, but the Prentiss boy—the son of an old friend of mine who has seen better days—came back here with me last night for some things, cast-offs, I had promised his unfortunate father. We met him on the street on the way home."
"Just around the corner," supplied Johnson Boller, who was growing steadily more anxious to speak his mind to Anthony about the Mrs. Boller matter.
"And having come upstairs with us and having selected the things he thought his father would like best," Anthony went on, "they were wrapped in a bundle of ordinary brown paper, tied up with ordinary, non-mysterious, crime-proof string and carried out by David, who, I have no doubt at all, reached home within half an hour, gave the clothes to his father, said his prayers and went to bed without further ado. If there is anything else you'd like to know, ask!"
Hobart Hitchin had not blinked. Now he smiled strangely and shrugged his shoulders.