“I can scarcely promise to do that,” Francis said slowly, his eyes resting for a second or two upon each of the four faces.  “Exact solutions are a little out of my line.  I think I can promise to give you a shock, though, if you’re strong enough to stand it.”

There was another of those curiously charged silences.  The bartender paused with the cocktail shaker still in his hand.  Voss began to beat nervously upon the counter with his knuckles.

“We can stand anything but suspense,” he declared.  “Get on with your shock-giving.”

“I believe that the person responsible for the death of Victor Bidlake is in this room at the present moment,” Francis declared.

Again the silence, curious, tense and dramatic.  Little Jimmy, the bartender, who had leaned forward to listen, stood with his mouth slightly open and the cocktail-shaker which was in his hand leaked drops upon the counter.  The first conscious impulse of everybody seemed to be to glance suspiciously around the room.  The four young men at the bar, Jimmy and one waiter, Francis and Sir Timothy Brast, were its only occupants.

“I say, you know, that’s a bit thick, isn’t it?” Sidney Voss stammered at last.  “I wasn’t in the place at all, I was in Manchester, but it’s a bit rough on these other chaps, Victor’s pals.”

“I was dining at the Cafe Royal,” Jacks declared, loudly.

Morse drew a little breath.

“Every one knows that I was at Brighton,” he muttered.

“I went home directly the bar here closed,” Jimmy said, in a still dazed tone.  “I heard nothing about it till the next morning.”

“Alibis by the bushel,” Fairfax laughed harshly.  “As for me, I was doing my show—­every one knows that.  I was never in the place at all.”

“The murder was not committed in the place,” Francis commented calmly.

Fairfax slid off his stool.  A spot of colour blazed in his pale cheeks, the glass which he was holding snapped in his fingers.  He seemed suddenly possessed.

“I say, what the hell are you getting at?” he cried.  “Are you accusing me—­or any of us Victor’s pals?”

“I accuse no one,” Francis replied, unperturbed.  “You invited a statement from me and I made it.”

Sir Timothy Brast rose from his place and made his way to the end of the counter, next to Fairfax and nearest Francis.  He addressed the former.  There was an inscrutable smile upon his lips, his manner was reassuring.

“Young gentleman,” he begged, “pray do not disturb yourself.  I will answer for it that neither you nor any of your friends are the objects of Mr. Leadsam’s suspicion.  Without a doubt, it is I to whom his somewhat bold statement refers.”

They all stared at him, immersed in another crisis, bereft of speech.  He tapped a cigarette upon the counter and lit it.  Fairfax, whose glass had just been refilled by the bartender, was still ghastly pale, shaking with nervousness and breathing hoarsely.  Francis, tense and alert in his chair, watched the speaker but said nothing.