“No, sir; Mr. Van Norman depended on his safety locks and strong bolts. He said he didn’t want no alarm, because it was forever getting out o’ kilter, and bolts were surer, after all.”
“And every night you make sure that these bolts and fastenings are all secured in place?”
“I do, sir, and I have done it for many years.”
“You looked after them last night, as usual?”
“Sure, sir; every one of them I attended to myself.”
“You can testify, then, that the house could not have been entered by a burglar last night?” asked Mr. Benson.
“Not by a burglar, nor by nobody else, sir, unless they broke down a door or cut out a pane of glass.”
“Yet Mr. Carleton came in.”
Harris looked annoyed. “Of course, sir, anybody could come in the front door with a latch-key. I didn’t mean that they couldn’t. But all the other doors and windows were fastened all right, and I found them all right this morning.”
“You made a careful examination of them?”