Stoddard turned his tired eyes on the room. There was no sympathy there. Just a half dozen men, with a stenographer making notes, and outside the dull roar of the city traffic.

“Am I to understand that I am under arrest?”

“That seems to be the general idea,” Stewart said amiably.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

THEY HAD THEIR CASE. Tony, hurrying to confer with Dwight Elliott, was appalled when Hopper told it to them. All day Saturday and on Sunday morning they had worked over the case from this new angle, interrogating the employees at the Farm, even the nurses at the hospital.

The first they broke was Julian’s alibi for the night Don was murdered. It was broken by the wife of the undergardener, Joe Smith, the one who had seen Lydia’s car driven into the lane.

She was reticent, however. She held a baby in her arms and eyed them coldly. “I don’t know anything. And it’s time to feed this child. Haven’t we made trouble enough? If Joe had kept his mouth shut, you wouldn’t be here this minute.”

“Suppose that baby of yours grew and somebody killed him? Would you want to protect the killer?”

“Mr. Stoddard’s no killer,” she said indignantly, and then saw what she had done. She looked frightened, but in due time and by threatening to take her to the city, away from her child, she gave in.

On the night Don was killed she was waiting up for her husband. He was later than usual, and she meant to give him a “piece of her mind.” It was a warm night. She sat on the dark porch of her cottage, which was not far from the edge of the ravine, and a few minutes after one o’clock she saw Julian Stoddard pass by. He had come from the direction of the ravine, and he was walking slowly, as though he was tired.

“Didn’t you think that was unusual?”

“Why should I? He’d been out to dinner. He was often late, and he liked to walk.”

“Did he see you?”

“I don’t think so.”

There were some discrepancies. For instance, she maintained that she could hear Julian on the path before she heard a car stop in the ravine. As to the car itself, she had thought it was someone bringing Joe home. But it was some time before Joe appeared.

Equally damaging was the unwilling statement of Julian’s valet. Pressed hard, and told of the Smith woman’s story, he admitted that Julian’s dinner clothes were in bad condition the next morning. “No worse than if he’d taken a walk in the dark,” he said belligerently. “He often did that. There was a bit of dirt and damp on the trousers.”

“How about his shoes?”

“They were a bit dirty too,” he admitted sullenly. “What’s the idea anyway? If you think he had anything to do with the trouble at the Cloisters, you don’t know Mr. Stoddard.”

They tried to see me, but I was out for the count. Margery, too, was in bed, having heard of the attack on me and making God knows what of it. Nevertheless, they made progress that day. They even succeeded in tying Evans’s disappearance to Julian. He had visited Evans a number of times in the hospital, and on the night of his arrest, with the news all over town, a probationer came forward. Not to the police. She walked timidly into the office of the superintendent of the training school. She was frightened but determined.