“But he never actually attacked your husband?” I quietly interposed, knowing that wives are apt to take exceedingly exaggerated views of their husband’s wrongs or rights.
“Oh, but he did, though. He came up once, not long after the quarrel, and said he had not got all the money due to him, and tried to murder Peter with the cutting shears.”
“Murder him? How could he murder him with shears?” I asked, with marked scepticism.
“Well, I didn’t wait to see; but ran in and gripped him by the arms till my man took the shears from him. The creatur’ had no more strength than a sparry, though he’s as tall as you.”
“No more strength than a sparrow?” That incidental revelation staggered me. It seemed to me quite impossible that a weak man could have been the murderer of Anderson, unless, indeed, he had had an accomplice, and that was unlikely with a man seeking mere revenge. For a moment I was inclined to think it possible that Burge might have tracked his victim to the hill and accomplished the revenge, and that afterwards, when he had fled the spot, some of the “ghosts” haunting the hill might have stripped the dead or dying man of his valuables; but several circumstances led me to reject the supposition—wisely, too, as it appeared in the end. Burge, the widow told me, was a tall man, with a white, “potty” face, and a little, red, snub-nose, and always wore a black frock coat and dress hat. I took down the name of the street in which he lived—for I could get no number—and turned in that direction. In about fifteen minutes I had reached, not the street, but the crossing leading to it, when I met full in the face a man answering his description, and having the unmistakable tailor’s “nick” in his back.
“That should be Burge,” was my mental conclusion, though I had never seen him before. “If he’s not, he is at least a tailor, and may know him,” and then I stopped him with the words—
“Do you know a tailor called John Burge who lives here-about?”
“That’s me,” he said, with sudden animation, taking the pipe from his mouth, and evidently expecting a call at his trade, “who wants me?”
“I do.”
“Oh,” and he looked me all over, evidently wondering how I looked so unlike the trade.