could not have killed Rufus Shepley about eleven o'clock, because I was
in Murk's company at that time."

"What time did you get back to your hotel with him?"

"It was a few minutes of midnight. We spent considerable time buying the
clothes and visiting the barber shop."

"Um!" the captain said. "We'll have to question a few of these people.
It seems peculiar to me that a millionaire would pick up a tramp and
turn him into a trusted servant."

"Perhaps it was peculiar. I can read men, I believe, and I decided that
Murk needed only a chance, and he would make good. He was broke and
friendless, and I was a millionaire and almost as friendless. That's the
only way I can explain it."

"I'm going to send you to another office under guard, Mr. Prale," the
captain said. "I'll have these people here in a short time, and we'll
question them. Just tell me where you bought the clothes for this man,
and what barber shop you visited."

Sidney Prale did so, and the captain of detectives made notes regarding
the addresses.

"That will be all for the present, Mr. Prale," he said. "I don't want to
cause any innocent man annoyance, but I can tell you this much--things
look very bad for you!"

CHAPTER VIII

LIES AND LIARS

Sidney Prale waited in an adjoining office, a detective sitting in one
corner of it and watching him closely. It was almost a prison room, for
there were steel bars at the windows, and only the one door. Prale
walked to one of the windows and looked down at the street, his arms
folded across his breast, trying to think it out.

The finding of that fountain pen in the room beside Rufus Shepley's body
was what puzzled and bothered him the most. How on earth could it have
come there? He tried to remember when he had used it last, when he had
last seen it. All that he could recall was that, the afternoon before,
he had used it to write a note in a memorandum book. How and where had
he lost it, and how had it come into Shepley's suite? Had he dropped it
in the hotel lobby during his short quarrel with Shepley, while he was
shaking the man? Had Shepley picked it up later and carried it home with
him? Prale did not think Shepley would have done that under the
circumstances.

Well, he'd be at liberty soon enough, he told himself. It was natural
for the police to learn of his quarrel with Shepley and to make an
arrest on the strength of that and of finding the fountain pen. His
alibi was perfect; they so