"Then answer a few questions. Did you get a typewritten letter this morning, with a wad of money in it?"
The barber's face turned white.
"Answer me!" Farland commanded.
"Yes, I—I got such a letter and I don't know what to make of it," the barber said. "I've got the letter and money in my desk right now. There wasn't any signature, and I didn't know where the letter came from, or what it meant."
"Then why did you do what the letter told you to do?" Farland asked.
"I—I don't understand."
Farland motioned, and Murk now stepped around the corner.
"Know this man?" Farland demanded.
"I—I've seen him before."
"That letter told you to go to police headquarters, if requested to do so, and deny you knew this man, didn't it? It told you not to help a man named Sidney Prale, arrested for murder, to make his alibi by telling that he was here with this man last night about eleven o'clock, didn't it?"