Carroll drove direct to his apartments, despite his original intention of dropping by headquarters for a chat with Leverage. He wanted to be alone—to think—
The evening had borne fruit beyond his wildest imaginings. Fact had piled upon fact with bewildering rapidity. As yet he had been unable to sort them in his mind, to catalogue each properly, to test for proper value.
He reached his apartment and found it warm and comfortable. He donned lounging robe and slippers which the thoughtful Freda had left out for him, settled himself in an easy chair, lighted a fire which he kept always ready in the grate and turned out the lights. Then, with his cigar glowing and great clouds of rich smoke filling the air—he sank into a revelry of thinking.
Certain disclosures of the evening stood out with startling clarity. Chief among them was the inevitable belief that Gerald Lawrence had either killed Roland Warren or else knew who had done so—and how it was done. Yet Carroll tried not to allow his thoughts and personal prejudices to run away with him. He knew that now, of all times, he must keep a tight grip on himself.
Great as was the dislike which he had conceived for Lawrence—an instinctive repugnance which still obtained—he was grimly determined that he would not be swayed by his emotions. Therefore he deliberately reviewed Lawrence's story in the light of its possible truth.
Lawrence claimed that he belonged to that none too rare class of prominent citizens who once every so often respond to the call of the wild within them by going to a nearby city where they are not known and giving themselves over to the dubious delights of a spree. Publication of this fact alone would prove sufficient to injure Lawrence socially and in the commercial world. The old case of the Spartan lad—Carroll reflected. The disgrace lay in being discovered.
Also, it was perfectly plain to Carroll that at the outset of his conversation Lawrence had been smugly satisfied that he was possessed of a perfect alibi. It was only under Carroll's merciless grilling that he had been brought abruptly to realization that he had no alibi whatever. The same logic applied there, as in Leverage's theory that Barker's arrest would be an excellent strategic move. All Carroll had to do now was to arrest Lawrence for Warren's murder—and the burden of proof would have been shifted from the shoulders of the detective to that of the suspect. It would then devolve upon Lawrence to prove an alibi that Carroll knew perfectly well he could not prove—save by merest accident.
But that was a procedure which Carroll abhorred. Those were police department methods: wholesale arrests in the hope of somewhere in the net trapping the prey. Such a course was at the bottom—and Carroll knew it—of an enormous number of convictions of innocent men. And Carroll had no desire to injure Lawrence provided Lawrence was free of guilt in this particular instance. He didn't like the man—in fact his feelings toward him amounted to a positive aversion. But through it all he tried to be fair-minded—and he could not quite rid himself of the picture of Naomi Lawrence—Carroll was far from impervious to the appeal of a beautiful woman.
So much for the probable truth of Lawrence's story. The reverse side of the picture presented an entirely different set of facts. There was not alone the strange procedure of checking out of the big hotel at four o'clock in the afternoon when he intended catching an early morning train: but there was the information so innocently dropped by the loquacious Evelyn Rogers regarding Naomi's actions on the night of the murder.
According to Evelyn, her sister was an intensely nervous woman: one who stood in fear of being alone at night. And yet this sister had volunteered the suggestion that Evelyn spend the night with Hazel Gresham when her husband was supposed to be out of the city.