“That’s nice,” I said. “I’ve got lousy alibis.”
A waiter came in with our breakfast. We talked about this and that until he had set the table and gone away.
Then Macaulay said: “You’ve nothing to be afraid of. I’m going to turn Wynant over to the police.” His voice was unsteady and a little choked.
“Are you sure he did it?” I asked. “I’m not.”
He said simply: “I know.” He cleared his throat. “Even if there was a chance in a thousand of my being wrong–and there isn’t–he’s a madman, Charles. He shouldn’t be loose.”
“That’s probably right enough,” I began, “and if you know–”
“I know,” he repeated. “I saw him the afternoon he killed her; it couldn’t’ve been half an hour after he’d killed her, though I didn’t know that, didn’t even know she’d been killed. I–well–I know it now.”
“You met him in Hermann’s office?”
“What?”
“You were supposed to have been in the office of a man named Hermann, on Fifty-seventh Street, from around three o’clock till around four that afternoon. At least, that’s what the police told me.”
“That’s right,” he said. “I mean that’s the story they got. What really happened: after I failed to find Wynant or any news of him at the Plaza and phoned my office and Julia with no better results, I gave him up and started walking down to Hermann’s. He’s a mining engineer, a client of mine; I had just finished drawing up some articles of incorporation for him, and there were some minor changes to be made in them. When I got to Fifty-seventh Street I suddenly got a feeling that I was being followed–you know the feeling. I couldn’t think of any reason for anybody shadowing me, but, still, I’m a lawyer and there might be. Anyhow, I wanted to find out, so I turned east on Fifty-seventh and wahked over to Madison and still wasn’t sure. There was a small sallow man I thought I’d seen around the Plaza, but– The quickest way to find out seemed to be by taking a taxi, so I did that and told the driver to drive east. There was too much traffic there for me to see whether this small man or anybody else took a taxi after me, so I had my driver turn south at Third, east again on Fifty-sixth, and south again on Second Avenue, and by that time I was pretty sure a yellow taxi was following me. I couldn’t see whether my small man was in it, of course; it wasn’t close enough for that. And at the next corner, when a red light stopped us, I saw Wynant. He was in a taxicab going west on Fifty-fifth Street. Naturally, that didn’t surprise me very much: we were only two blocks from Julia’s and I took it for granted she hadn’t wanted me to know he was there when I phoned and that he was now on his way over to meet me at the Plaza. He was never very punctual. So I told my driver to turn west, but at Lexington Avenue–we were half a block behind him–Wynant’s taxicab turned south. That wasn’t the way to the Plaza and wasn’t even the way to my office, so I said to hell with him and turned my attention back to the taxi following me–and it wasn’t there any more. I kept a look-out behind all the way over to Hermann’s and saw no sign at all of anybody following me.”
“What time was it when you saw Wynant?” I asked.
“It must’ve been fifteen or twenty minutes past three. It was twenty minutes to four when I got to Hermann’s and I imagine that was twenty or twenty-five minutes later. Well, Hermann’s secretary–Louise Jacobs, the girl I was with when I saw you last night–told me he had been locked up in a conference all afternoon, but would probably be through in a few minutes, and he was, and I got through with him in ten or fifteen minutes and went back to my office.”
“I take it you weren’t close enough to Wynant to see whether he looked excited, was wearing his watch-chain, smelled of gunpowder– things like that.”