"Bindle, you're at the bottom of this." Mrs. Bindle had come out of the back-parlour, just as the duplicates were leaving. She regarded her husband with a suspicion that amounted to certainty.
"Me?" queried Bindle innocently; "me at the bottom of wot?"
"You know something about these men. It's a shame, and this Mr. Hearty's first day. Look how it's upset him."
"Now 'ow d'you think I could make six alibis like them——" Bindle's defence was interrupted by the sound of music.
"Well, I'm blowed!" he exclaimed, "if it ain't them alibis."
The "doubles" had all produced tin whistles, which they were playing as they marched slowly up and down in front of Mr. Hearty's premises. Five seemed to have selected each his own hymn without consultation with his fellows; the sixth, probably a secularist, had fallen back upon "The Men of Harlech."
A crowd was already gathering.
Mr. Hearty looked about him like a hunted rat, he rushed to the shop door, desperation in his eyes, violence in his mind. Before he had an opportunity of coming to a decision as to his course of action, a new situation arose, that distracted his thoughts from the unspeakable "alibis."