“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 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.  But of course Dundas will get out of it somehow or other, in the end.”