"Nothing, my dear boy, except that you _were_ a member of the household, and as I said, we’re clearing up every one in sight. It’s only a formality, a tagging and disposing of all unnecessary elements. You went for a motor ride that night—a long ride. You wouldn’t mind telling us where, would you? It’s just for the purpose of eliminating you along with the rest of the dead wood." The young man’s gaze dropped from Whitney’s face to his own hat lying on the table. He looked at it with an absent stare. "A motor ride?" he murmured. "Yes, from eight-thirty till nearly two." "Um," Price appeared to be considering. "Let me see—what was the date, I don’t remember?" George assisted his memory: "July the seventh—a moonlight night." "Ah," he had it now, nodding his head several times in restored recollection. "Of course, I remember perfectly. There was a heavy rain early in the evening and then a full moon." He turned to the elder man. "I’m rather fond of ranging about at night, and couldn’t quite place what especial ride you referred to. I took a long spin up the Island." "Up?" said Whitney, "not being a Long Islander I don’t know your directions. Would ’up’ mean toward the city?" "No, the other way, out along the Sound roads and on toward Peconic." "Kept to the country, eh? Too fine a night to waste in town." Price’s face darkened. George watching him noticed a slight dilation of his nostrils, a slight squaring of the line of his jaw. His answer came in a tone hard and combative: "Exactly. I get enough of town in the day. I rode, as I told you, out to the east, a long way—I can’t give you the exact route if that’s what you want." He suddenly leaned forward and snatched his hat from the table. Holding it against his side he made an ironical bow to his questioner said, "Does _that_ eliminate me as a suspect?" Whitney laughed, a sound of lazy good humor rich with the tolerance of a vast experience: "My dear Chapman, why use such sensational terms? Suspect is a word we haven’t reached yet. Take this as it’s meant—a form, merely a form." "The form might have included a questioning of me before you took the trouble to look up what I did. Evidently my word wasn’t thought sufficient." His glance, darkly threatening, moved from one man to the other. George started to protest, but he cut in, his words directed at old Whitney: "It’s all I have to offer you now. It’s what I say against what you’ve been told to believe. I can prove no alibi, for I was with no one, saw no one, started alone and stayed alone. That’s all you’ll get out of me, and you can take it or leave it as you d——n please." He turned and walked toward the door, the elder Whitney’s conciliatory phrases delivered to his back. The door knob in his hand he wheeled round, the anger he had been struggling to subdue fierce in his face: