"The coroner's jury would inquire into the matter."
"Coroner! fiddlesticks! I beg your pardon, sir, but I did not mean to answer you that way, though I did know that coroner's juries care the least of anybody how such fellows die. The verdict would be 'accidental death,' 'found dead,' 'died of visitation of Providence;' or, if the murderers got a chance, which they might do easy enough, to chuck the body in the dock, the verdict would be 'found drowned,' no matter if he had a hole in his head as big as my fist."
"They could not carry the body from this neighborhood to the river without being detected."
"Couldn't they. How did Ring-nosed Bill and Snakey Jo carry Pedlar Jake from Cale Jones's to Peck-slip and send him afloat?"
"What, dead?"
"Yes, sir, they put too much opium in his rum to get him to sleep, so they could rob him, and he did not wake up, and so they walked him off."
"Walked him off, how?"
"They stood him up and fastened one of their legs to his each side, so that when they stepped his feet travelled too, and so they-went along, talking to him and cursing him for being so drunk, till they got to the dock."
"Where were the Police, do they never notice such things?"
"Lord, no sir, they steps round the corner when they sees a drunken man coming, particularly if he has one of his friends with him."