"Altogether the question of hats played an important role in the drama of Leighton's arrest and final discharge. The magistrate did not commit him for trial, because the case for the prosecution collapsed suddenly like a pack of cards. It was the question of hats that saved Leighton's neck from the hangman's rope. You remember, perhaps, that in his evidence he had stated that before starting to interview his irate employer he had been with some friends at the Café Royal in Regent Street, and that subsequently he met these friends there for supper. Well, although it appeared impossible to establish definitely the time when Leighton left the Café Royal to go to Fulton Gardens, there were two or three witnesses prepared to swear that he was back again at a quarter to ten. Now this was very important. It seems that his friends, who were waiting at the Café Royal, were getting impatient, and at twenty minutes to ten by the clock one of them--a fellow named Richard Hurrill--said he would go outside and see if he could see anything of Leighton. He strolled on as far as Piccadilly Circus where the buses stop that come from the City, and a minute or two later he saw Leighton step out of one. He seemed a little fuzzy in the head, and Hurrill chaffed him a bit. Then he took him by the arm and led him back in triumph to the Café Royal. "Now mark what followed," the funny creature went on, whilst all at once his fingers started working away as if for dear life on his bit of string. "A hat--a soft grey hat--with an overcoat wrapped round it, were found in the area of a derelict house in Blackhorse Road, Walthamstow, close to the waterworks, and identified as the late Mr. Seton Jessup's overcoat and hat. I don't suppose that you have the least idea where Blackhorse Road, Walthamstow, is, but let me tell you that it is at the back of beyond in the northeast of London. If you remember, the point policeman had stated that the first visitor had called at No. 13 Fulton Gardens at half-past eight, and stayed half an hour. He then walked away in the direction of Finsbury. That visitor, the police argued, was Arthur Leighton, who had murdered Mr. Jessup and sent the telephone message to Fitzjohn's Avenue; then, hearing Ann Weber moving about downstairs and frightened at being caught by her, he had put on the deceased's hat and coat and slipped out of the house. Ann, however, had recognised him. She had involuntarily given him away when the housekeeper asked her whom she was talking to, so she invented the story of having seen what she thought was Mr. Jessup in order to save her sweetheart.