We found Deluc to have led a dissipated life, and to have mixed with very bad company. But he had kept out of reach of the law. Aman may be a profligate vagabond; may insult a lady; may say threatening things to her, in the first stinging sensation of having his face slapped--but it doesn't follow from these blots on his character that he has murdered her husband in the dead of the night.
Once more, then, when we were called upon to report ourselves, we had no evidence to produce. The photographs failed to discover the owner of the knife, and to explain its interrupted inscription. Poor Mrs. Zebedee was allowed to go back to her friends, on entering into her own recognizance to appear again if called upon. Articles in the newspapers began to inquire how many more murderers would succeed in baffling the police. The authorities at the Treasury offered a reward of a hundred pounds for the necessary information. And the weeks passed and nobody claimed the reward.
Our Inspector was not a man to be easily beaten. More inquiries and examinations followed. It is needless to say anything about them. We were defeated--and there, so far as the police and the public were concerned, was an end of it.
