The district attorney sat back, looking complacent.

“Sit down, Mr. Stoddard,” he said affably. “I’ll soon tell you what it is about. Suppose we go back to the night Morgan was murdered. What time did you leave the Cloisters?”

“About midnight.”

“On foot?”

“On foot. It is only half a mile by the path to my place.”

“What time did you get back to your house?”

“I’m not sure. I had some things to think over. I walked about for a while.”

“Anybody see you, on the way or when you got home?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“What about your wife?”

“She was asleep.”

“Felt pretty safe, eh?” said Stewart. “No scandal, no anything. Then it blew up. I see.”

“Nothing blew up, as you call it,” said Julian, again stiff and dignified.

They did not believe him, of course. They went back over that night. He could have telephoned Morgan, making an appointment to meet him at the playhouse. Morgan had had a call, according to his wife. He could have met him there and—

“That’s ridiculous. Why would I meet him there? With a hundred other places about?”

But Stewart kept on relentlessly. “Just why did your wife go home early that night, Mr. Stoddard? Was it by prearrangement with you?”

That infuriated him. He flushed and clenched his hands. “Another statement like that, Stewart,” he said, “and I’ll knock your teeth down your lying throat.”

Stewart, well surrounded by his cohorts, merely smiled. “All right,” he said. “I lay my cards on the table, Stoddard. We believe that you killed Donald Morgan that night, that you took the car he came in and placed the body where it was found, that you then drove this car to the ravine back of your house, and had only to climb the hill to be at home again.”

Stoddard went pale, but he was still fighting. “I’m not a damned fool,” he said. “If I had done it, would I have left that car where it was found?”

Hopper had been looking over his notes. “You drew three thousand dollars in cash out of the bank last week. Do you care to say why you did that?”

“No. It was a private affair of my own.”

“Did you, last Friday night, see Patricia Abbott when she met your wife? Beside your swimming pool?”

“I had no idea my wife had met anybody that night until she told me about it later.”

He was getting tired. Tired and confused. He sat there, trying to see where all this was leading; but the barrage of questions kept on. There was no time to think.

Then they sprang their trump card.

“Listen, Stoddard,” said the district attorney. “Better come clean. We’ve got you, and you know it. You didn’t go straight home the night Morgan was killed. We know when you got home, and how. We know you’d been seeing Evans at the hospital, and were outside his window the night he disappeared. And we have a pretty good idea you tried to kill Miss Abbott at the Farm, the night she told your wife what she knew. Better talk, Stoddard. We’ve got it anyhow.”