"But I thought you said Petrofsky had been turned away from the house."
"So he had, a week before; but he had left a box in his room, and on this day he had come to fetch it. That was what started the trouble. Miriam had taken his room for her bedroom, and turned her old one into a workroom. She said he should not go to her room to fetch his box."
"And did he?"
"I think so. Miriam and Edith and I went out, leaving him in the hall. When we came back the box was gone, and, as Mrs. Goldstein was in the kitchen and there was nobody else in the house, he must have taken it."
"You spoke of Miriam's workroom. What work did she do?"
"She cut stencils for a firm of decorators."
Here the coroner took a peculiarly shaped knife from the table before him, and handed it to the witness.
"Have you ever seen that knife before?" he asked.
"Yes. It belongs to Miriam Goldstein. It is a stencil-knife that she used in her work."
This concluded the evidence of Kate Silver, and when the name of the next witness, Paul Petrofsky, was called, our Mansell Street friend came forward to be sworn. His evidence was quite brief, and merely corroborative of that of Kate Silver, as was that of the next witness, Edith Bryant. When these had been disposed of, the coroner announced: