If he could prove that he'd been in the house no more than half an hour, it might be all right, for two doctors agree that the murdered man had been dead more than an hour when they were called in.

But he can't or won't prove it--that's his luck again!--and nobody can be found who saw him in any of the streets through which he mentions passing.

The last moment that he can be accounted for is when a cabman, who'd taken him up at the hotel just after he left us, set him down in the Rue de Courbvoie, not so very far from the Elysee Palace.

Then it was only between five and ten minutes past twelve, so he could easily have gone on to the Rue de la Fille Sauvage afterwards and killed his man at the time when the doctors say the fellow must have died.

It's a bad scrape.