“It was not a thief that struck her.”
“Well, well, we don’t know. I have my own theory,” admitted the coroner; “but, of course, it will not do for me to mention it here. The stick was taken from that pile laid ready on the hearth,” he went on. “Odd, significantly odd, that in all its essential details this affair should tally so completely with the supposable case of crime given a moment before by the deformed wretch you tell me about.”
“Not if that man was a madman and the assailant,” suggested the District Attorney.
“True, but I do not think he was mad—not from what you have told me. But let us see what the commotion is. Someone has evidently arrived.”
It was Mr. Byrd, who had entered by the front door, and deaf to the low murmur of the impatient crowd without, stood waiting in silent patience for an opportunity to report to the District Attorney the results of his efforts.
Mr. Ferris at once welcomed him.
“What have you done? Did you find the constable or succeed in laying hands on that scamp of a humpback?”
Mr. Byrd, who, to explain at once, was a young and intelligent detective, who had been brought from New York for purposes connected with the case then before the court, glanced carefully in the direction of the coroner and quietly replied:
“The humpbacked scamp, as you call him, has disappeared. Whether he will be found or not I cannot say. Hunt is on his track, and will report to you in an hour. The tramp whom you saw slinking out of this street while we stood on the courthouse steps is doubtless the man whom you most want, and him we have captured.”
“You have?” repeated Mr. Ferris, eying, with good-natured irony, the young man’s gentlemanly but rather indifferent face. “And what makes you think it is the tramp who is the guilty one in this case? Because that ingenious stranger saw fit to make him such a prominent figure in his suppositions?”
“No, sir,” replied the detective, flushing with a momentary embarrassment he however speedily overcame; “I do not found my opinions upon any man’s remarks. I only—Excuse me,” said he, with a quiet air of self-control that was not without its effect upon the sensible man he was addressing. “If you will tell me how, where, and under what circumstances this poor murdered woman was found, perhaps I shall be better able to explain my reasons for believing in the tramp as the guilty party; though the belief, even of a detective, goes for but little in matters of this kind, as you and these other gentlemen very well know.”
“Step here, then,” signified Mr. Ferris, who, accompanied by the coroner, had already passed around the table. “Do you see that clock? She was winding it when she was struck, and fell almost at its foot. The weapon which did the execution lies over there; it is a stick of firewood, as you see, and was caught up from that pile on the hearth. Now recall what that humpback said about choosing a thoroughfare for a murder (and this house is a thoroughfare), and the peculiar stress which he laid upon the choice of a weapon, and tell me why you think he is innocent of this immediate and most remarkable exemplification of his revolting theory?”
“Let me first ask,” ventured the other, with a remaining tinge of embarrassment coloring his cheek, “if you have reason to think this woman had been lying long where she was found, or was she struck soon before the discovery?”
“Soon. The dinner was still smoking in the kitchen, where it had been dished up ready for serving.”
“Then,” declared the detective with sudden confidence, “a single word will satisfy you that the humpback was not the man who delivered this stroke. To lay that woman low at the foot of this clock would require the presence of the assailant in the room. Now, the humpback was not here this morning, but in the courtroom. I know this, for I saw him there.”
“You did? You are sure of that?” cried, in a breath, both his hearers, somewhat taken aback by this revelation.
“Yes. He sat down by the door. I noticed him particularly.”
“Humph! that is odd,” quoth Mr. Ferris, with the testiness of an irritable man who sees himself contradicted in a publicly expressed theory.
“Very odd,” repeated the coroner; “so odd, I am inclined to think he did not sit there every moment of the time. It is but a step from the courthouse here; he might well have taken the trip and returned while you wiped your eyeglasses or was otherwise engaged.”
Mr. Byrd did not see fit to answer this.
“The tramp is an ugly-looking customer,” he remarked, in what was almost a careless tone of voice.
Mr. Ferris covered with his hand the pile of loose change that was yet lying on the table, and shortly observed:
“A tramp to commit such a crime must be actuated either by rage or cupidity; that you will acknowledge. Now the fellow who struck this woman could not have been excited by any sudden anger, for the whole position of her body when found proves that she had not even turned to face the intruder, much less engaged in an altercation with him. Yet how could
