he remarked. "What you might call a hunch. We shall have to rub it all out and start again. Suppose, sir, you were to talk to me openly, just like you said you would?"
"It is not true. I dispute it! If my watch can lose so, why then is it now correct?"
"Would it be because you've set it right?" suggested the Inspector helpfully.
The Prince glared at him. "You take the word of an ignorant country fellow before mine? You are insolent, my friend, and I resent it!"
"Yes, well, we'll get along a sight better, sir, if you don't waste my time with that kind of talk. What I want to know is just what you were doing in between the time you left this house, which, by all accounts, can't have been later than a quarter-to-five, and the time you arrived at the doctor's house."
"I should be accustomed to persecution!" the Prince said, with a dramatic gesture. "My God, have I not been persecuted enough already by the Bolsheviki?"
"No knowing, I can't say, sir, but you won't get persecuted by Bolsheviks in this country, that I do know; though if you refuse to answer my questions you stand a very good chance of ending up inside a police cell."
"I did not know that my watch was slow!" the Prince cried. "It was in innocence that I showed it to that woman! What would you? Do I know this place? Was I conducted to the doctor's house? It is not easy to remember exactly what is told one! Of the murder I know nothing! But nothing!"
"Oh! So you admit that your watch was slow, sir?"
"It was slow, yes, but I did not then know it! Listen, for I will tell you all! It is true that I left this house at a quarter-to-five. I asked of Mr. Carter the way to the doctor's house, and he told me, but I forget. I remember that I shall come to a T-road, but there is no sign-post, and I do not recall which way I must turn. I turn to the right, but there is no village. I go slowly, but when in two - three - miles there is still no village, I am sure that I have taken the wrong turning. I come to a cross-road, and I see at last a sign-post, which tells me I have come away from Stilhurst. I turn the auto, therefore, and I go back. That is all!"