“Do you mean that he knows nothing at all about it?” asked Ellery.
“I am quite sure that he knows nothing. He has told me exactly what he did after leaving here and up to the time when he went back to his Club.”
“You may think I ought not to ask this, Joan,” said Lucas; “but are you quite sure of what you say?”
“Absolutely sure. He was telling me the truth, I know.”
“Then I suppose,” Ellery put in, “we can produce witnesses to prove that he was somewhere else when he was supposed to be here. But who the devil did send that telephone message if he did not?”
Lucas put in a word. “Never mind that for the moment. The main thing now is to prove that he did not send it. Who was with him and where was he?”
“Ah, that’s just the difficulty. He has told me exactly where he went; but I don’t see how we can find any one to prove it.”
“Do you mean that he was alone all the time, and no one saw him?” asked Ellery.
“Well, not quite that; but something very like it, I’m afraid.”
Then Joan was allowed to tell her story. Walter Brooklyn, after being refused an interview with Sir Vernon, had left Liskeard House at about a quarter past ten. He had stopped for a minute or two outside the Piccadilly Theatre, wondering what to do next. Then he had walked slowly along Piccadilly and into the Circus. There again he had hung about for a few minutes, and had then gone slowly along Coventry Street as far as Leicester Square. He had walked round the Square, and outside the Alhambra had stopped for a few minutes to talk to a woman of his acquaintance—“not at all a nice woman, I am afraid,—and he knows no more about her than that her name is Kitty, and that she is often to be found about there. He doesn’t even know her surname. It was about a quarter to eleven when he met her.”