"I certainly did not! I cannot lie about such a thing, even to save my cousin. Why, it would make me a sort of accessory, wouldn't it? I cannot afford to be mixed up in anything of the sort. You must understand that!"
"And you didn't urge him to leave New York and remain away for the rest of his life?"
"I didn't see him at all," George Lerton persisted. "Why on earth should I care whether he remains in New York or takes his million dollars elsewhere?"
"I don't know, I'm sure," Farland said. "But it seems peculiar to me that Sid would tell a rotten falsehood like that. Doesn't it look peculiar to you?"
"I must confess that it does not," George Lerton replied. "I suppose it was the first thing that came into his head. He was trying to establish an alibi, of course, and he probably thought he would get a chance to telephone to me and ask me to stand by the story he had told, thinking that I would do it because of our relationship."
"I was hoping that you would tell me you had met him on Fifth Avenue," Farland said. "It would have made his alibi stronger, of course, and every little bit helps."
"Stronger? You mean to say that he has any sort of an alibi at all?"
"A dandy!" Farland exclaimed. "In fact, we have an alibi that tells us that Sid was quite a distance from Rufus Shepley's suite when Shepley was slain."
"Why, how is that?"
"Sid picked up a bum and tried to make a man of him. He bought the fellow some clothes and took him to a barber shop. The clothing merchant and the barber furnish the alibi."