"Hm!" said the superintendent, who had already thrown open the window, and was looking up and down the road. He closed it rather noisily.
"I see," he mumbled, tugging at his mustache, "and what about that door over there?"
"Goes into the next room," Tom said, inwardly quaking. "It is..."
"Oh," remarked Aspeland carelessly, taking out pocket-book and pencil. "Oh, I say, I just picked up a telegram here."
He made Tom tell him what he knew about the telegram from Gothenburg, then he said rather crossly, "It seems to me as if no one here were capable of giving any explanation of this tiresome business! Oh, well, I haven't done with it yet; we shall see."
He stood still for a while without appearing to be looking at anything in particular, then he slowly walked out, shutting the door after him. Tom began to feel dizzy and to wonder what he really had been doing; had he really in cold blood been trying to bamboozle a police superintendent?
The door of the next room was gently opened and the girl came out. They looked at one another in silence. Tom essayed to speak, but his voice failed him. In his mind's eye he still beheld the lifeless body, and his wrath and indignation against the murderer broke out afresh.
"Anyhow, you were there," he said, hardness and suspicion in his tone.
The girl hung her head.
"Then you don't believe me?" she said in a low voice. "I ... I can't explain. It is so hard ... I am so awfully lonely."