Ellis’s story may be taken up here and analysed. He, as has been said, is a lodging-house keeper, but the sort of lodging-house he keeps is known by another name among the ribald. He saw Ross, according to his evidence, “a little after 9, before 10, then at 11, and two or three times between that and 10 minutes to 1,” when he retired. Strange to say, he did not see Ross go in with Gladys Wain or come out with her, though the sight of a young couple near his “lodging-house” is just the sort of thing that might have been expected to attract his attention. He did not see Ross come back on the bicycle, as he had been said to do, though one would have thought he could not have failed to see it, if it were a fact, and if he did keep constant vigil until nearly 1 o’clock. It should, however, be noted that Ellis did not say, in so many words, that he saw Ross at the times mentioned. According to the evidence, he told the police on the Sunday following the murder that he saw a man whom he did not know, and had never seen before, walking in and out of the Arcade, as stated. On the 12th, when Ross was arrested, Ellis was brought to the Detective Office, and he there and then identified Ross as being the man whom he had seen. Ellis lives within a few yards of the Eastern Arcade, and according to his own evidence, knew all about the wine saloon. Through the Arcade would be his direct way to Bourke Street. Ross had received great publicity seven or eight weeks previously in connection with what has been referred to as the Arcade shooting case. Ellis must have been an extraordinarily unobservant man if, in spite of that publicity, of his knowledge of the wine saloon, and of its close proximity to his residence, he had never set eyes on Ross before. When called upon to identify Ross, he was bound, of course, to say that he had never seen him before, because, if he knew Ross, he would have been asked how it was that he did not tell the detectives that it was Ross he saw walking in and out. It is also curious if Piggott, as he said, had the case “well in hand” on the first day, and had Ellis’s statement on the following day, that he did not confront Ellis with Ross until a fortnight had elapsed. But, conceding Ellis’s honesty, it is surely risking much to depend on the fortnight-old observations of a witness who is so unobservant that he had never observed a man who carried on business within a few yards of him, and who, a couple of months before, was locally “the cynosure of every eye, the observed of all observers.” But if the story told in the confessions is true, then Ellis can not have seen Ross “at 11, and two or three times between that and 10 minutes to 1,” for Ross was away at Footscray at the time. Apart altogether from the confessions, it was proved by overwhelming independent evidence that Ross did catch a train at Spencer Street at about 11.30, and caught a tram which left him at the terminus, not far from his home, shortly before midnight.