"As sure as anyone can be in such a case. It was a late hour when he came, and everyone seems to have been asleep except the dying woman and Sal; and as one is dead, the other is the only person that can prove that he was there at the time when the murder was being committed in the hansom."
"And Mother Guttersnipe?"
"Was drunk, as she acknowledged last night. She thought that if a gentleman did call it must have been the other one."
"The other one?" repeated Calton, in a puzzled voice. "What other one?"
"Oliver Whyte."
Calton arose from his seat with a blank air of astonishment.
"Oliver Whyte!" he said, as soon as he could find his voice. "Was he in the habit of going there?"
Kilsip curled himself up in his seat like a sleek cat, and pushing forward his head till his nose looked like the beak of a bird of prey, looked keenly at Calton.
"Look here, sir," he said, in his low, purring voice, "there's a good deal in this case which don't seem plain—in fact, the further we go into it,—the more mixed up it seems to get. I went to see Mother Guttersnipe this morning, and she told me that Whyte had visited the 'Queen' several times while she lay ill, and that he seemed to be pretty well acquainted with her."
"But who the deuce is this woman they call the 'Queen'?" said Calton, irritably. "She seems to be at the bottom of the whole affair—every path we take leads to her."