"Well--well," I broke in. "If you stopped on the way, you can remember where. The people you spoke to will be as good as the clerks and bell-hops at the Palace for your alibi." He sat silent, thoughtful, and I added, "Where did you go from Tait's, Worth?" "To a garage--in the Tenderloin--where they keep good cars. I'd hired machines from them before." "Oh, they knew you there? Then their testimony will--" "I don't believe you want it, Jerry. It only accounts for the half hour--or less--right after I left you; all I did was to hire a car." "A car," I echoed vaguely. "What kind of a car? Hired it for when?" "I asked them for the fastest thing they had in the shop. Told 'em to fill it all round, and see that it was tuned up to the last notch. I wanted speed." "My God, Worth! Do you know what you're telling me?" "The truth, Jerry." His eye met mine unflinchingly. "That's what you want, isn't it?" "Where did you go?" I groaned. "You must have seen somebody who could identify or remember you?" "Not a solitary human being to identify me. Those I passed--there were people out of course, late as it was--saw my headlights as I went by. But I was moving fast, Jerry. I was working off a grouch; I needed speed." "Where did you go?" "Straight down the peninsula on the main highway to Palo Alto, made the sweep across to the sea, and then up the coast road. I ran into the garage about dawn." "No stops anywhere?" He shook his head. "And that's your alibi?" "That's my alibi." Worth looked at me a long while before he said finally, "Don't you see, Jerry, that the other side had all this before they encouraged Bowman to change his mind about when father was shot?" I did see it--ought to have known from the first. This was what they had back of them last night in Cummings' room; this explained the lawyer's smug self-confidence, Dykeman's violent certainty that Worth was a criminal. A realization of this had whitened Barbara's face, set her lips in that pitiful, straight line. As to their momentary chagrin over Bowman; no trouble to them to get other physicians to bolster any opinion he'd given. Medical testimony on such a point is notoriously uncertain. All the jury would want to know was that there could be such a possibility. I sat there with bent head, and felt myself going to pieces. Cummings was right--I was no fit man to handle this job. My personal feelings were too deeply involved. It was Worth's voice that recalled me. "Cheer up, Jerry, old man. Take it to Bobs." Take it to Bobs--the idea of a big, husky old police detective running to cast his burden on such shoulders! I couldn't quite do it then. I went and telephoned the little girl that I was doing the best I could--and then ran circles for the rest of the day, chasing one vain hope after another, and finally, in the late afternoon, sneaked home to Santa Ysobel.