“It seems clear enough that he was in the house. I suppose he will be able to explain that. But we mustn’t be content with getting just his explanation of what he was doing here. Try to find out exactly what he did and where he went that day. We may need to be able to account for every minute of his time.”
Joan said that she quite saw how every detail mattered. If he would tell her anything, he would probably be willing to tell the whole story. At all events, she would do her best. It would be wisest, they agreed, for her to go alone; for Walter Brooklyn would very likely refuse to talk if Ellery were with her. But he would walk round to the club with her, and wait while she tried to get her stepfather to see her.
So Joan and Ellery walked round to the Byron Club together. There was a strange pleasure—quite unlike anything they had known before—in merely walking side by side. They belonged to each other now. But the answer to Ellery’s inquiry of the Club porter was that Mr. Brooklyn was out, and that he had left word he might not return to the Club that night. Joan did not at all like the expression on the porter’s face as he gave this information. She saw that he at any rate had strong suspicions, presumably put into his mind by the police.
Asked whether he could say where Mr. Brooklyn was, the porter did not know. He might, perhaps, be at his other Club, the Sanctum, in Pall Mall. Or again, he might not. He had not said where he was going.
Inquiries at the other Club were equally barren. Mr. Walter Brooklyn had not been there that day. He might come in, or he might not. And again Joan saw from the porter’s manner that here too her stepfather was under suspicion of murder.
Joan left at each Club a message asking Walter Brooklyn to ring her up at Liskeard House immediately he came in. This was all that could be done for the moment; and to Liskeard House they returned, having suffered a check at the outset of their quest. Ellery promised to spend the evening scouring London for traces of Walter Brooklyn; and in the mind of each was the half-formed thought that he might have fled rather than reveal what he knew. Each knew that the other feared this; but neither put the thought into words. They arranged to meet again on the following morning, and Ellery was to ring up later in the evening to report whether he had traced Walter, and to hear whether any message had come to Joan from either of the Clubs. Then, after the manner of lovers, they bade each other farewell a dozen times over, each farewell more lingering than the last. At length Ellery went; for he was due at Scotland Yard, where he hoped to find that his alibi had been accepted, and the last trace of suspicion removed from him. It would be awkward to be followed about by the man in police boots wherever he went with Joan, and it would be awkward to have the police know exactly what they were doing in Walter Brooklyn’s interest. The police boots had followed Joan and him on their visits to the two Clubs, and now, as he left Liskeard House, Ellery saw their owner leaning against a lamppost opposite, and gazing straight at the front door. Never, he thought, had a man looked more obviously a detective—or rather a policeman in plain clothes. Even apart from the boots, he was labelled policeman all over—from his measured stride to the tips of his waxed moustache. As Ellery turned down into Piccadilly, he heard the man coming along behind him.
XV
To and Fro
It was by a fortunate accident that Ellery had been able so soon to establish his alibi. After drawing blank at the Chelsea Arts Club, he had had very little of an idea where he should try next. He was almost certain that it was there he had been introduced to the man, and the only course seemed to be that of waiting until he turned up again, or his name somehow came back to mind. Still, it was just possible that Ellery had met the man at his other Club in the Adelphi, and he got on a bus and went there to pursue his inquiries. His success was no better, although he remained there to lunch and made persistent inquiries of his fellow-members for an actor whose name began with an F. The afternoon found him walking rather disconsolately down the Strand not at all certain where to go next. Just outside the Golden Cross Hotel, fortune did him a good turn; for he ran straight into the very man he was looking for. Ellery turned back with him, and explained the difficulty he was in, and his acquaintance promised to go at once to Scotland Yard, and try to set matters right with Inspector Gibbs. He was so friendly that Ellery had some difficulty in admitting that he had forgotten his name; but he got round it by asking for his address, in case of need. The other’s answer was to hand him a card, on which was written:—
William Gloucester,
11 Denzil Street, S.W. 3.
“Of course,” said Ellery to himself. “But it didn’t begin with an F after all.”
This meeting put Ellery at his ease; and he felt that he could now go and see Joan with a clear
