Gertrude had been sitting listlessly waiting for the evening message from Mr. Jamieson, but when the singular pair came in, as they did, without ceremony, she jumped up and stood staring.  Winters, the detective who watched the house at night, followed them, and kept his eyes sharply on Alex’s prisoner.  For that was the situation as it developed.

He was a tall lanky individual, ragged and dirty, and just now he looked both terrified and embarrassed.  Alex was too much engrossed to be either, and to this day I don’t think I ever asked him why he went off without permission the day before.

“Miss Innes,” Alex began abruptly, “this man can tell us something very important about the disappearance of Mr. Innes.  I found him trying to sell this watch.”

He took a watch from his pocket and put it on the table.  It was Halsey’s watch.  I had given it to him on his twenty-first birthday:  I was dumb with apprehension.

“He says he had a pair of cuff-links also, but he sold them—­”

“Fer a dollar’n half,” put in the disreputable individual hoarsely, with an eye on the detective.

“He is not—­dead?” I implored.  The tramp cleared his throat.

“No’m,” he said huskily.  “He was used up pretty bad, but he weren’t dead.  He was comin’ to hisself when I”—­he stopped and looked at the detective.  “I didn’t steal it, Mr. Winters,” he whined.  “I found it in the road, honest to God, I did.”

Mr. Winters paid no attention to him.  He was watching Alex.

“I’d better tell what he told me,” Alex broke in.  “It will be quicker.  When Jamieson—­when Mr Jamieson calls up we can start him right.  Mr. Winters, I found this man trying to sell that watch on Fifth Street.  He offered it to me for three dollars.”

“How did you know the watch?” Winters snapped at him.

“I had seen it before, many times.  I used it at night when I was watching at the foot of the staircase.”  The detective was satisfied.  “When he offered the watch to me, I knew it, and I pretended I was going to buy it.  We went into an alley and I got the watch.”  The tramp shivered.  It was plain how Alex had secured the watch.  “Then—­I got the story from this fellow.  He claims to have seen the whole affair.  He says he was in an empty car—­in the car the automobile struck.”

The tramp broke in here, and told his story, with frequent interpretations by Alex and Mr. Winters.  He used a strange medley, in which familiar words took unfamiliar meanings, but it was gradually made clear to us.

On the night in question the tramp had been “pounding his ear”—­ this stuck to me as being graphic—­in an empty box-car along the siding at Casanova.  The train was going west, and due to leave at dawn.  The tramp and the “brakey” were friendly, and things going well.  About ten o’clock, perhaps earlier, a terrific crash against the side of the car roused him.  He tried to open the door, but could not move it.  He got out of the other side, and just as he did so, he heard some one groan.