"Not very long ago," reiterated the lawyer, musingly.
"No, not very long ago; but the case has been reported, I tell you. Anybody may have read it."
"Humph," said the lawyer, as he turned to go, with his mind evidently busily at work both on the strange sort of confusion that had been visible in the Professor's manner, and on the circumstances he had elicited from him.
"I'll tell you what," said one of the young students to the other, while they were engaged in preparing to consign the body of the murdered woman to the police. "I'll tell you what: I'll be blessed if I don't think the governor knows, or has a shrewd guess, who it is has done this job. Did you mark the way he looked, and went as pale as death, when I showed him the place?"
"Bah, nonsense! He was vexed that he had not seen it himself. How should he know anything about it?"
"I don't know how; but I know him, and his ways," said the first speaker.
"But if he thinks he has any guess at the murderer, why don't he say it at once?" asked the younger lad.
"Ah, yes, I think so; I should like to see him at it. That's not his business, that's the lawyer's business. You may depend on his keeping his own secret, if he has got one. The governor likes quiet sailing in still water, he does. But if he did not see something more in this little bit of steel and atom of wax, that have stopped a life so cleverly, than the mere things themselves and the effect of them,—why, then, I know nothing about old Buonaventura Tomosarchi, that's all."
"How see something more?" said the younger lad, open-eyed.
"Saw who put 'em there, Ninny. It is not everybody who could be up to such a dodge; and I feel sure the governor could make a shrewd guess who did that clever trick."