"By the same means precisely--the striking of the church clock. He remembers hearing it just as he reached the partition door, and was, indeed, at particular pains to take out his watch to see if it tallied with it. Also, three of our scene painters were passing along the hall at the foot of the short flight of steps leading up to the glass-room at the time. They were going out to tea; and one of them sang out to him laughingly, 'Hallo, Ginger, how does that two-shilling turnip of yours make it? Time for tea at Buckingham Palace?' for he had won the watch at a singing contest only the night before, and his mates had been chaffing him about it all day. In that manner the exact time of his going to the door with the boy is fixed, and with three persons to corroborate it. A second later the porter saw the boy push open the swing-door and walk into the place, and as he turned and went back downstairs he distinctly heard him say, 'Good afternoon, sir. Mr. Trent said I might come up and watch, if you don't mind.'" "Did he hear anybody reply?" "No, he did not. He heard no one speak but the boy." "I see. So, then, there is no actual proof that Loti _was_ in there at the time, which, of course, makes the testimony of Mrs. Sherman and her daughter appear reliable when they say that the room was empty." "Still the boy was there if Loti wasn't, Mr. Cleek. There's proof enough that he did go into the place even though those two women declare that the room was empty." "Quite so, quite so. And when two and two don't make four, 'there's something rotten in the state of Denmark.' What does Loti himself say with regard to the circumstance? Or hasn't he been spoken to about it?" "My hat, yes! I went to him about it the very first thing. He says the boy never put in an appearance, to _his_ knowledge; that he never saw him. In fact, that just before half-past four he was taken with a violent attack of sick headache, the result of the fumes rising from the wax he was melting to model figures for the tableau, together with the smell of the chemicals used in preparing the background, and that he went down to his room to lie down for a time and dropped off to sleep. As a matter of fact, he was there in his room sleeping when, at half-past six, I went for the boy, and, finding the glass-room vacated, naturally set out to hunt up Loti and question him about the matter." "When you called up to the glass-room through the speaking-tube, to say that the boy was about to go up, who answered you--Loti?" "Yes." "At what time was that? Or can't you say positively?" "Not to the fraction of a moment. But I should say that it was about four or five minutes before the boy got there--say about five-and-twenty minutes past four. It wouldn't take him longer to get up to the top of the house, I fancy, and he certainly did not stop at any of the other departments on the way."