"No doubt! But it ain't right to cast suspicions when you can't prove a thing, is it?"
"Perhaps others may find the proof."
"Just so. People in your trade are pretty good at that, I reckon."
"Good at what?"
"Proving things that don't exist."
"But if your suspicion is groundless, there can be no harm in telling it to me."
"Oh, there's grounds enough for what I think. Look here, suppose a case. Suppose a party, a young female party, dies. Suppose her folks think they'd like to have her hands crossed on her breast. Suppose a man, me, for instance, helps the boss fix up that young party with her hands crossed, and suppose there's a handsome shiner, a fust-water diamond, on one finger. Suppose we screw down that coffin lid tight at night, and the boss carts off his pet screw-driver. Then suppose next day, when he opens that coffin for the visitors to have a last look at the young person, that the other man, meanin' me, happens to notice that the shiner is missin'. If no other person notices it, that's because they're too busy grievin'. But that's the boss's luck, I say. The diamond's gone, just the same, ain't it? Now, you wouldn't want to claim that the young person come out of that patent box and give that diamond away in the night, would you? If she come out at all, I should say it was in the form of a ghost, and I never heard of ghosts wearin' diamonds, or givin' away finger rings. Did you?"
"Do you mean to say that such a thing as this has occurred?"
"Oh, I ain't sayin' a word. I don't make no accusations. You can draw your own conclusions. But in a case like that you would think there was more than one of them screw-drivers, now, wouldn't you?"
"I certainly should, unless we imagined that Mr. Berial himself returned to the house and stole the ring. But that, of course, is impossible."