From time to time I was troubled by recollection of Barbara's crushed look from the moment they sprung it on us, but brushed that aside with the obvious explanation that her efforts in bringing Mrs. Bowman to speak out had just been of no use; surely enough to depress her.
Worth met me, fit, quiet, not over eager about anything. They let us talk with a guard outside the door. Once alone, he listened appreciatively while I told him of our interview with Cummings and Dykeman as fast as I could pile the words out.
"Nobody on earth like Bobs," was his sole comment. "Never was, never will be."
"And now," I reminded him nervously, "there's the question of this alibi. You went straight from the restaurant to your room at the Palace and to bed there?"
"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."
"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."
"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?"