“What does that have to do with it?”
“Don’t you understand? She knew him as Archibald C. Smith. The minute she saw him, she would have said, ‘Why, how do you do, Mr. Smith? What brings you here?’ Then the cat would have been out of the bag. He knew that. Therefore, if he had thought she was there, he’d have sent me down alone to call on her.”
Bertha was interested now. “Anything else?”
“Lots of it.”
“What?”
“The only real witness to that exact time of the shooting is a girl by the name of Marilyn Winton. She’s a nightclub hostess. She was just entering the apartment house when she heard the sound of the shot. She looked at her wrist watch a few minutes later. She places the shot as being at exactly two-thirty-two.”
“What about her?”
I said, “Emory Hale was seen entering that apartment house at about twenty minutes past two.”
“You mean that’s where he was when he was supposed to have been in New York?”
“Yes.”