In Mr. Roberts’s dressing-room, that gentleman is discovered tragically confronting Mr. Willis Campbell, with a watch uplifted in either hand.
Willis: ‘Well?’
Roberts, gasping: ‘My—my watch!’
Willis: ‘Yes. How comes there to be two of it?’
Roberts: ‘Don’t you understand? When I went out I—didn’t take my watch—with me. I left it here on my bureau.’
Willis: ‘Well?’
Roberts: ‘Oh, merciful heavens! don’t you see? Then I couldn’t have been robbed!’
Willis: ‘Well, but whose watch did you take from the fellow that didn’t rob you, then?’
Roberts: ‘His own!’ He abandons himself powerlessly upon a chair. ‘Yes; I left my own watch here, and when that person brushed against me in the Common, I missed it for the first time. I supposed he had robbed me, and ran after him, and—’
Willis: ‘Robbed him!’