Page:Waylaid by Wireless - Balmer - 1909.djvu/237

Rh the Tudor Hotel the night before till after twelve when the Bahia had sailed, I would now probably be the champion plaiter of neat rattan chair-bottoms in your crack penitentiary, Mr. Dunneston. Really," he concluded, "if the word had come at night and they had found me wearing my evening clothes, I don't think even the alibi could have cleared me."

"But the alibi, Mr. Preston," the Briton persisted, puzzled. "You said that the alibi was false, did you not?"

"Oh, that was the funny part of it, Mr. Dunneston," the girl put in for the other somewhat weakly. "Mr. Preston really left at eleven; but as mother didn't know that, she got him off easily without suspecting that she was perjuring herself."

"I see!" the Englishman acknowledged doubtfully after a moment. "But, obviously, you knew it, Miss Varris? And I say, Mr. Preston, then you were not only arrested upon the information received by the 'wireless,' and freed upon a false alibi, but actually, 213