over his rival, that on casually meeting him, he stopped and invited him to drink.
The primary effect of his sudden and unusual hospitality was to arouse all Gorby’s suspicions; but on second thoughts, deeming himself quite a match for Kilsip, both mentally and physically, Gorby accepted the invitation.
“Ah!” said Kilsip, in his soft, low voice, rubbing his lean white hands together, as they sat over their drinks, “you’re a lucky man to have laid your hands on that hansom cab murderer so quickly.”
“Yes; I flatter myself I did manage it pretty well,” said Gorby, lighting his pipe. “I had no idea that it would be so simple—though, mind you, it required a lot of thought before I got a proper start.”
“I suppose you’re pretty sure he’s the man you want?” pursued Kilsip, softly, with a brilliant flash of his black eyes.
“Pretty sure, indeed!” retorted Mr. Gorby, scornfully, “there ain’t no pretty sure about it. I’d take my Bible oath he’s the man. He and Whyte hated one another. He says to Whyte, ‘I’ll kill you, if I’ve got to do it in the open street.’ He meets Whyte drunk, a fact which he acknowledges himself; he clears out, and the cabman swears he comes back; then he gets into the cab with a living man, and when he comes out leaves a dead one; he drives to East Melbourne and gets into the house at a time which his landlady can prove—just the time that a cab would take to drive from the Grammar School on the St. Kilda Road. If you ain’t a fool, Kilsip, you’ll see as there’s no doubt about it.”
“It looks all square enough,” said Kilsip, who wondered what evidence Calton could have found to contradict such a plain statement of fact. “And what’s his defence?”
“Mr. Calton’s the only man as knows that,” answered Gorby, finishing his drink; “but, clever and all as he is, he can’t put anything in, that can go against my evidence.”
“Don’t you be too sure of that,” sneered Kilsip, whose soul was devoured with envy.
“Oh! but I am,” retorted Gorby, getting as red as a turkey-cock at the sneer. “You’re jealous, you are, because you haven’t got a finger in the pie.”
“Ah! but I may have yet.”
“Going a-hunting yourself, are you?” said Gorby, with an indignant snort. “A-hunting for what—for a man as is already caught?”
“I don’t believe you’ve got the right man,” remarked Kilsip, deliberately.
Mr. Gorby looked upon him with a smile of pity.
“No! of course you don’t, just because I’ve caught him; perhaps, when you see him hanged, you’ll believe it then?”
“You’re a smart man, you are,” retorted Kilsip; “but you ain’t the Pope to be infallible.”
“And what grounds have you for saying he’s not the right man?” demanded Gorby.
Kilsip smiled, and stole softly across the room like a cat.
“You don’t think I’m such a fool as to tell you? But you ain’t so safe nor clever as you think,” and, with another irritating smile, he went out.
“He’s a regular snake,” said Gorby to himself, as the door closed on his brother detective; “but he’s bragging now. There isn’t a link missing in the chain of evidence against Fitzgerald, so I defy him. He can do his worst.”
At eight o’clock on that night the soft-footed and soft-voiced detective presented himself at Calton’s office. He found the lawyer impatiently waiting for him. Kilsip closed the door softly, and then taking a seat opposite to Calton, waited for him to speak. The lawyer, however, first handed him a cigar, and then producing a bottle of whisky and two glasses from some mysterious recess, he filled one and pushed it towards the detective. Kilsip accepted these little attentions with the utmost gravity, yet they were not without their effect on him, as the keen-eyed lawyer saw. Calton was a great believer in diplomacy, and never lost an opportunity of inculcating it into young men starting in life. “Diplomacy,” said Calton, to one young aspirant for legal honours, “is the oil we cast on the troubled waters of social, professional, and political life; and if you can, by a little tact, manage mankind, you are pretty certain to get on in this world.”
Calton was a man who practised what he preached. He believed Kilsip to have that feline nature, which likes to be stroked, to be made much of, and he paid him these little attentions, knowing full well they would bear their fruit. He also knew that Kilsip entertained no friendly feeling for Gorby, that, in fact, he bore him hatred, and he determined that this feeling which existed between the two men, should serve him to the end he had in view.
“I suppose,” he said, leaning back in his chair, and watching the wreaths of blue smoke curling from his cigar, “I suppose you know all the ins and the outs of the hansom cab murder?”
“I should rather think so,” said Kilsip, with a curious light in his queer eyes. “Why, Gorby does nothing but brag about it, and his smartness in catching the supposed murderer!”
“Aha!” said Calton, leaning forward, and putting his arms on the table. “Supposed murderer. Eh! Does that mean that he hasn’t been convicted by a jury, or that you think that Fitzgerald is innocent?”
Kilsip stared hard at the lawyer, in a vague kind of way, slowly rubbing his hands together.
“Well,” he said at length, in a deliberate manner, “before I got your note, I was convinced Gorby had got hold of the right man, but when I heard that you wanted to see me, and knowing you are defending the prisoner, I guessed that you must have found something in his favour which you wanted me to look after.”
“Right!” said Calton, laconically.
“As Mr. Fitzgerald said he met Whyte at the corner and hailed the cab—” went on the detective.
“How do you know that?” interrupted Calton, sharply.
“Gorby told me.”
“How the devil did he find out?” cried the lawyer, with genuine surprise.
“Because he is always poking and prying about,” said Kilsip, forgetting, in his indignation, that such poking and prying formed part of detective business. “But, at any rate,” he went on quickly, “if Mr. Fitzgerald did leave Mr. Whyte, the only chance he’s got of proving his innocence is that he did not come back, as the cabman alleged.”
“Then, I suppose, you think that Fitzgerald will prove an ALIBI,” said Calton.
“Well, sir,” answered Kilsip, modestly, “of course you know more about the case than I do, but that is the only defence I can see he can make.”
“Well, he’s not going to put in such a defence.”
“Then he must be guilty,” said Kilsip, promptly.
“Not necessarily,” returned the barrister, drily.
“But if he wants to save his neck, he’ll have to prove an ALIBI,” persisted the other.
“That’s just where the point is,” answered
