Passengers coming and going paid no attention to the boy, save to push him out of their road, and he was even more alone in the hurrying throng than he had been on the street.
After wandering to and fro, trying to screw up courage enough to ask the conductor for a free ride, and failing in the effort because none of the train hands would give him an opportunity to speak with them, he sat down on a truck and mechanically plunged his hands in his pockets.
The paper purchased on the evening previous was the only thing which met his touch.
"I might as well find out about this murder," he said to himself, as he unfolded the printed sheet. "When a feller is readin' he kinder forgets how hungry he is, I reckon."
To give the printed account in all its details would require too much space, since there were no less than five columns in Jet's paper.
The substance was to the effect that a well-known merchant, residing on East Twentieth Street, had been found on the floor of his library the previous morning, his skull crushed in as if with some heavy instrument like a crow-bar, or a burglar's jimmy, and the safe, which was known to have contained money and bonds to the amount of forty-six thousand dollars, was broken open and empty.
The theory of the detectives was that thieves had entered the dwelling for the purpose of robbery; but having been surprised by the owner, killed him in order to make good their escape.
A large tuft of hair in the dead man's hand told that he had grappled with his murderers, and the overturned furniture spoke of a long and desperate struggle.
Singular as it may seem none of the other occupants of the house had heard any unusual noise, although the uproar must have been great for some moments, nor was any shock perceived when the safe door had been blown off.
It was as the paper stated, the most mysterious of the many detective-baffling crimes which had been committed in New York city, because of the fact that such a deed could have been done without alarming any one in the vicinity.