"I saw them coming along the street from the window, and I pointed them out to Fred. He tried to get away through the kitchen window along the ledge and down the spouting. He almost got away, but one of the detectives saw him before he reached the ground, and they dashed down stairs and got him in the street. Next day I saw in the papers that Hill had made an important statement to the police, and this had led to Fred's arrest. Hill is the murderer, Kincher. The cunning, wicked, treacherous villain told the police about Fred being up there. He wants to see Fred hang in order to save his own neck." The girl's voice rose to a shriek, and she sprang to her feet with blazing eyes. "Kincher," she cried, "you've got to help me put the rope round this wretch's neck. Do you hear me?" Kemp's impassivity was in marked contrast to the girl's hysterical excitement. "What do you want me to do?" he asked. "Fred wants you to get up an alibi for him. He sent me over to ask you to arrange it without delay. He wants you and two or three others to swear that he was over here on the night of the murder. That will be sufficient to get him off." "Not me," said Kemp, shaking his head decidedly. "I won't do it; it's too risky. The police have too many things against me for my word to be any good as a witness. I'd only be landing myself in trouble for perjury instead of helping Fred out of trouble. He ought to have got an alibi ready before he was arrested. I told him at the inquest that he ought to look after it, and he swore he'd not been up there on the night of the murder. It is too late to do anything in the alibi line now. I don't know anybody I could get to come forward and swear Fred was in their company that night--there is a difference between fixing up a tale for the police before a man's arrested, and going into the witness box and committing perjury on oath." He spoke in such an uncompromising tone that the girl saw it was useless to pursue the matter further. "Suppose I went to the police and told them that Hill is the murderer?" she suggested. Kemp shook his head slowly. "There is only your word for it that Hill killed him," he said. "It doesn't look to me as if he did, when he went over to your flat and told Fred that Sir Horace had come back from Scotland. If he had killed him he would have let Fred go over without saying a word about it." "That was part of his cunning," said the girl. "If he had said nothing about Sir Horace's return, Fred would have suspected him when he found the dead body. I'm as certain that Hill committed the murder as if I had seen him do it with my own eyes." Kemp shrugged his shoulders as though realising the uselessness of attempting to combat such a feminine form of reasoning. "Didn't Fred say that the body was warm when he touched it?" he asked. She meditated a moment over this evidence of Hill's innocence. "Well, if Hill didn't kill him, the woman Fred saw leaving the house must have done so," she declared.