"Do they?" was all he got out of me. That made him laugh, jolly and boyish. "Oh, you needn’t keep your guard up now. Your stuff’ll be in the papers to-morrow, and, take it from me, that fellow that sent the message is going to get a jar." "The man I listened to?" "Sure. He hasn’t got the ghost of an idea anyone overheard him. Can’t you imagine how he’ll feel when he opens his paper and sees that a smart little hello girl was tapping the wire?" It’s funny, but I’d never thought of it that way. Why, he’d get a shock like dynamite! It got hold of me so that I didn’t speak for a spell, thinking of that man reading his paper to-morrow—over his coffee or maybe going down in the L—and suddenly seeing printed out in black and white what he thought no one in the world knew except himself and that poor dead girl. Babbitts went on talking, me listening with one ear—which comes natural to an operator. "We’ve been rounding up all the men that were after her—not that they were backward with their alibis—only too glad to be of service, thank you! Carisbrook was at Aiken, a lawyer named Dunham was up state trying a case; Robinson, a chap in a bank, was spending the week-end on Long Island. There was only one of them near here—man named Cokesbury. Do you know him?" Both my ears got busy. "Cokesbury," I said, sort of startled, "was Cokesbury at the Lodge last week?" "He was and I know just what he did." "What did he do?" He laughed out as gay as you please, for he saw he’d got me just where he wanted. "When I’ve tried to find out things from you you’ve turned me down." "Aw, go on," I said coaxing, "don’t you know by experience I’m no talking machine to give out every word that’s said to me." "I believe you," he answered, "and it’ll be good for your character for me to set a generous example. Cokesbury was at the Lodge from last Saturday on the one-ten train to last Monday on the eight-twenty." "Gee!" I said, soft to myself. "You can quell those rising hopes," he replied. "He wasn’t the man you heard." "How do you know?" "Because hearing that he was a friend of Miss Hesketh’s, I spent part of yesterday at Azalea and found that Mr. Cokesbury can prove as good an alibi as any of them." "Did you see him?" "No, he wasn’t there and if he had been I wouldn’t have bothered with him. I saw someone much better—Miner, the man who owns the Azalea Garage, where Cokesbury puts up his car. It appears that the trip before last Cokesbury broke his axle and had to have his car towed down to the garage and left there to be mended. When he came down Saturday he expected it to be done and when it wasn’t, got in a rage and raised the devil of a row. He had to go out to his place in one of Miner’s cars which left him there and went back for him Monday morning." "Then he had no auto on Sunday."