"Oh, he’s that and more, and he’s ready to admit it himself. But it wasn’t as smooth sailing as he thought it would be. After the inquest he read of the overheard phone message and that brought him up with a jolt. He got in a state of terror, realizing too late that his silence was more incriminating than any confession. "Every day his fears grew worse. He wouldn’t answer any phone calls, faking up reasons to his clerks and his servants. Finally it got on his nerves so he couldn’t stand it and he made ready to skip to Europe. The key was what tripped him up. Do you remember Mr. Whitney saying how criminals overlooked important details? Well, what he overlooked was the key of the garage. In his preoccupation on Monday morning he had put it in the pocket of the raincoat he was accustomed to leave in the auto and had simply forgotten it. Then when he went to pack his things he couldn’t find it, hunted in a nervous frenzy and finally had his man telephone over to Miner’s place. You and the key were the combination that beat him." "But Jack Reddy?" I said. "Was he going to slink off and let him be tried for the murder when he could have cleared it all up?" "He _says_ not and I guess the fellow’s not as yellow as to have stood by and let an innocent man go to his death. He says there wasn’t enough evidence to convict Reddy and if things had gone badly he would have come out and told what he knew. And I think that’s true—anyway, we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt." "How can you be so sure? How do you know he’s _not_ the murderer after all?" "Oh, there’s no doubt. Everything fits in too well. The police were out at Cokesbury Lodge on Saturday and saw the aeroplane and found Miss Hesketh’s bag. Both the Whitneys—father and son, who’ve had a vast experience in this sort of case—say there’s no question of his innocence." We sat silent for a spell, looking at the stove, then I said: "We’re back just where we were in the beginning." Babbitts leaned forward and shook down some ashes. "The case is, but we’re not," he said. "How do you make that out?" I asked. "Six weeks ago we didn’t know each other and now we’re friends." "That’s so," I said, and we both sat staring thoughtfully at the red eye of the stove. XV Cokesbury’s story made a great sensation. Even if it didn’t bring us any nearer to finding the murderer, it explained the mystery of Sylvia’s movements up to the time she appeared in the Wayside Arbor, and it cleared Jack Reddy. Babbitts told me that the Whitneys were doing some legal stunts—I won’t tell what they were for I’d never get them straight—to have him liberated, and that they would soon issue a statement to the press. When it came out everybody saw why he had said such contradictory things about those seven hours on the road.