a.

"He didn't try to," replied Lord Bob. "He's simply refused, up to the
present, to tell what he was doing between twelve o'clock and the time
he was found, except to say that he walked for a good while before going
to the house where Girard afterwards found him. Of course he denies
killing the man: says the fellow had stolen something from him, on the
boat crossing from Dover to Calais yesterday, and that after applying to
the detective, he got a note from the thief, offering to give the thing
back if he would call and name a reward. Says he found the room already
ransacked and the fellow dead, when he arrived at the address given him;
that he was searching for his property when Girard appeared on the
scene."

"Couldn't he have shown the note sent by the thief?" asked Aunt Lil.

"He did show a note. But it does him more harm than good. And he
wouldn't tell what the thing was the thief had taken from him, except
that it was valuable. It does look as if he were determined to make the
case as black as possible against himself; but then, as I said before,
no doubt he has good reasons."

"He has no good luck, anyhow!" sighed Aunt Lil, who always liked Ivor.

"Rather not--so far. Why, one of the worst bits of evidence against him
is that the concierge of this house in the Rue de la Fille Sauvage
swears that though Dundas hadn't been in the place much above half an
hour when the detective arrived, he was there then _for the second
time_, that he admitted it when he came. The first visit he made,
according to the concierge, was about an hour before the second: the
concierge was already in bed in his little box, but not asleep, when a
man rang and an English-sounding voice asked for Monsieur Gestre. On
hearing that Gestre was away, the visitor said he would see the
gentleman who was stopping in Gestre's room. By and by the Englishman
went out, and on being challenged, said he might come back again later.
After a while the concierge was waked up once more by a caller for
Gestre, who announced that he'd been before; and now he vows that it was
the same man both times, though Dundas denies having called twice. 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