a back door
opening into it, but it's practically useless, because the alley
is so narrow one can't drive a vehicle through it. It's simply a
right of way that can't legally be closed and runs from Croom
Street on the right just along as far as Sturgiss Lane on the
left. Not fifty people pass through it in a day's time.

"But to come back to the short passage, Mr. Cleek. Observe, there
are no windows at all on the side of our building, here: Number
2. There were, once upon a time, but we had them bricked up, as
we use that side for a 'paint frame' with a movable bridge so
that it can be used for the purpose of painting scenery and
drop-curtains. But there _are_ windows in the side of the house
marked 5; and directly opposite the point where I've put the arrow
there is one which belongs to a room occupied by a Mrs. Sherman and
her daughter--people who do 'bushel work' for wholesale costume
houses. Now, it happens that at the exact time when the porter
says he showed young Stan into the glass-room those two women were
sitting at work by that window, and, the blinds not being drawn,
could see smack into the place, and are willing to take their oath
that there was no living soul in it."

"How do they fix it as being, as you say,'the exact time,' Mr. Trent?
If they couldn't see the porter come up to the glass-room with the
boy, how can they be sure of that?"

"Oh, that's easily explained: There's a church not a great way
distant. It has a clock in the steeple which strikes the hours,
halves, and quarters. Mrs. Sherman says that when it chimed half-past
four she was not only looking into the glass-room, but was calling
her daughter's attention to the fact that, whereas some few minutes
previously she had seen Loti go out of the place, leaving a great
pile of reference plates and scraps of material all over the
floor, and he had never, to her positive knowledge, come back into
it, there was the room looking as tidy as possible, and, in the
middle of it, a table with a vase of pink roses upon it, which
she certainly had not seen there when he left."

"Hallo! Hallo!" interjected Cleek rather sharply. "Let's have that
again, please!" and he sat listening intently while Trent repeated
the statement; then, of a sudden, he gave his head an upward twitch,
slapped his thigh, and, leaning back in his seat, added with a brief
little laugh, "Well, of all the blithering idiots! And a simple
little thing like that!"

"Like what,