“Well, I will say, Tom,” said Mrs. Hobbs, “you have more sense than I gave you credit for. You should arrest that Jew boy at once. I should not hesitate a minute.”
“Easy, my dear, easy. Remember you were equally persistent just now, first that Booth killed himself, then that Jacob Schnider did it.”
“I said nothing of the sort. It was you, you thick-headed numbskull! But there, that’s just like you, trying to put your own mistakes on my shoulders! Why, no one with a grain of sense could hesitate for a minute. I had my doubts from the first about that clerk!”
“Well, old woman, let us suppose it is the clerk, or some one helping him. How do you account for his passing through two locked and bolted doors, and re-passing, leaving them fastened behind him? That he should be able to open the doors is understandable, but that he should have troubled to relock and rebolt them after himself is incredible. The man who robbed the shop locked neither safe nor door, though the motive in that case would have been quite as strong and the job much easier, for in this case the locking was from the outside.”
“Then the murderer did not open the doors at all!”
“So I was inclined to think. But there are only two other possible entrances to the room—a chimney a cat could hardly crawl down, and a window fastened inside, barred without, and thirty-three feet from the ground.”
“Well, I don’t care what you say! That Israel did it, right enough! I never saw a man so aggravating as you are. You no sooner find the man that did it than you try and prove he didn’t!”
* * * * *
It was the evening of the next day. Mr. Hobbs had returned to his tea.
“Well, Tom!” said his wife; “how did the inquest go? Anything fresh?”