Antrim held his watch down so that the flare of Jarvis’s match lighted the face of it. “Six-thirty--seven-thirty. The train Hobart is coming on is late, and I’ll time things so we can go by the station and pick him up. That gives me a clear hour to spare. Get in, and we’ll take you back to town.” The reporter took his place in the empty four-wheeler and rode cityward in solitary state, rode as far as the Union Depot, and then got out to walk uptown. Recalling the incidents of that eventful night, he could never quite account for the impulse which led him to drift aside from the straight course to the Plainsman building, to turn the corner at Blake Street, and finally to stroll aimlessly into Draco’s. At that early hour the place was all but deserted, and Tom Deverney was glad enough to have some one to talk to. As a matter of course, he reverted to the impending fate of the one known to both. “Poor old George!” he said in rough sympathy. “To-morrow morning winds him up, doesn’t it? By cripes, if the old town was what it used to be, they’d have to call out the soldiers before they could hang him!” But Jarvis would not speak of Brant. “Tell me once more, Tom, about that fellow who was running with the Professor--about how he looked, I mean.” “Still a-twanging on that old string?” laughed the bartender. “I have told you till I can’t remember how he looked myself.” “Never mind; dig it over once more,” begged Jarvis “It’s the last time I’ll ever bother you about him.” And thus besought, Deverney racked his memory and described the unknown man for the twentieth time. “Old clothes--always the same old clothes,” Jarvis groaned in despair. “Didn’t he ever change them, I wonder?” “Not that anybody ever saw or heard of. I--” The bartender stopped short and knitted his brows till they met above his eyes. “Say, I told you he was in here to get a drink the night of the killing, didn’t I?” “Yes.” “Well, he’d changed ’em that night, for once--gone into mourning. I recollect, because I joshed him about the misfit; asked him which one of his uncles had died and left him the blacks.” “What!” “It’s a fact. Didn’t I tell you that before?” “No.” Jarvis grew suddenly cool and wary. “That is, I don’t remember it if you did. Now, cudgel your brain once more, Tom, and try to guess me at about what hour that was.” “It just so happens that I can tell you to a dot. A minute or two after ‘his Blacks’ was in here a fellow came up from the faro game and wanted twenty-five cases on his watch. I let him have ’em, and when I went to put the ticker in the safe I noticed the time. It was half past eleven.”