“An alibi!” gasped Wimp.  “Really?”

“Oh, yes.  He was with his wife, you know.  She’s my woman of all work, Jane.  She happened to mention his being with her.”

Jane had done nothing of the kind.  After the colloquy he had overheard, Grodman had set himself to find out the relation between his two employees.  By casually referring to Denzil as “your husband,” he so startled the poor woman that she did not attempt to deny the bond.  Only once did he use the two words, but he was satisfied.  As to the alibi, he had not yet troubled her; but to take its existence for granted would upset and discomfort Wimp.  For the moment that was triumph enough for Wimp’s guest.

“Par,” said Wilfred Wimp, “what’s a alleybi?  A marble?”

“No, my lad,” said Grodman, “it means being somewhere else when you’re supposed to be somewhere.”

“Ah, playing truant,” said Wilfred, self-consciously; his schoolmaster had often proved an alibi against him.  “Then Denzil will be hanged.”

Was it a prophecy?  Wimp accepted it as such; as an oracle from the gods bidding him mistrust Grodman.  Out of the mouths of little children issueth wisdom; sometimes even when they are not saying their lessons.

“When I was in my cradle, a century ago,” said Wimp’s grandmother-in-law, “men were hanged for stealing horses.”

They silenced her with snapdragon performances.

Wimp was busy thinking how to get at Grodman’s factotum.

Grodman was busy thinking how to get at Wimp’s domestic.

Neither received any of the usual messages from the Christmas Bells.

* * * * *

The next day was sloppy and uncertain.  A thin rain drizzled languidly.  One can stand that sort of thing on a summer Bank Holiday; one expects it.  But to have a bad December Bank Holiday is too much of a bad thing.  Some steps should surely be taken to confuse the weather clerk’s chronology.  Once let him know that Bank Holiday is coming, and he writes to the company for more water.  To-day his stock seemed low, and he was dribbling it out; at times the wintry sun would shine in a feeble, diluted way, and though the holiday-makers would have preferred to take their sunshine neat, they swarmed forth in their myriads whenever there was a ray of hope.  But it was only dodging the raindrops; up went the umbrellas again, and the streets became meadows of ambulating mushrooms.

Denzil Cantercot sat in his fur overcoat at the open window, looking at the landscape in watercolours.  He smoked an after-dinner cigarette, and spoke of the Beautiful.  Crowl was with him.  They were in the first floor front, Crowl’s bedroom, which, from its view of the Mile End Road, was livelier than the parlour with its outlook on the backyard.  Mrs. Crowl was an anti-tobacconist as regards the best bedroom; but Peter did not like to put the poet or his cigarette out.  He felt there was something