He hesitated. "I've just been kinder milling things around. Do you happen to know right when you met Brill the day of the robbery?"
"Yes. I looked at my watch to see if we would be in time for supper. It was five-thirty."
"And the robbery was at three. The fellows didn't get out of town till close to three-thirty, I reckon," he mused aloud.
"What has that got to do with it? You don't mean that——" She stopped with parted lips and eyes dilating.
He shook his head. "I've got no right to mean that, Phyllie. Even if I did have a kind of notion that way I'd have to give it up. Brill's got a steel-bound, copper-riveted alibi. He couldn't have been at Noches at three o'clock and with you two hours later, fifty-five miles from there. No hawss alive could do it."
"But, Jim—why, it's absurd, anyway. We've known Brill always. He couldn't be that kind of a man. How could he?"
"I didn't say he could," returned her friend noncommittally. "But when it comes to knowing him, what do you know about him—or about me, say? I might be a low-lived coyote without you knowing it. I might be all kinds of a devil. A good girl like you wouldn't know it if I set out to keep it still."
"I could tell by looking at you," she answered promptly.
"Yes, you could," he derided good-naturedly. "How would you know it? Men don't squeal on each other."
"Do you mean that Brill isn't—what we've always thought him?"