been up there on the night of the
murder. It is too late to do anything in the alibi line now. I don't know
anybody I could get to come forward and swear Fred was in their company
that night--there is a difference between fixing up a tale for the police
before a man's arrested, and going into the witness box and committing
perjury on oath."

He spoke in such an uncompromising tone that the girl saw it was useless
to pursue the matter further.

"Suppose I went to the police and told them that Hill is the murderer?"
she suggested.

Kemp shook his head slowly.

"There is only your word for it that Hill killed him," he said. "It
doesn't look to me as if he did, when he went over to your flat and told
Fred that Sir Horace had come back from Scotland. If he had killed him he
would have let Fred go over without saying a word about it."

"That was part of his cunning," said the girl. "If he had said nothing
about Sir Horace's return, Fred would have suspected him when he found
the dead body. I'm as certain that Hill committed the murder as if I had
seen him do it with my own eyes."

Kemp shrugged his shoulders as though realising the uselessness of
attempting to combat such a feminine form of reasoning.

"Didn't Fred say that the body was warm when he touched it?" he asked.

She meditated a moment over this evidence of Hill's innocence.

"Well, if Hill didn't kill him, the woman Fred saw leaving the house must
have done so," she declared.

"There is something in that," said Kemp. "Look here, we've got to get
Fred a good lawyer to defend him, and we must be guided by his advice as
to what is the best thing to do. He knows more about what will go down
with a jury than you do."

"I paid a solicitor to defend him at the police court," said the
girl, "but the money I gave him was thrown away. He said nothing and
did nothing."

"That shows he is a man who knows his business," replied Kemp. "What's
the good of talking to police court beaks in a case that is bound to go
to trial? It's a waste of breath. The thing is to see that Fred is
properly defended when the case comes on at the Old Bailey. We want
somebody who can manage the jury. I should say Holymead is the man if you
can get him. I don't know as he'd be likely to take up the case, for he
don't go in much for criminal courts--and yet it seems to me that he
might. You ought to try to get him, at least. He used to be a friend of
your friend Sir Horace, so if he too