“Tell me again whose coat was this?”

“That there article of clothing likeways belonged to, and was wore by⁠—him as I have made mention on,” was again the dull Old Bailey evasion.

“I suspect that you gave him the credit of the deed, and of keeping cleverly out of the way. But there was small cleverness in his keeping out of the way. The cleverness would have been, to have got back for one single instant to the light of the sun.”

“Things is come to a pretty pass,” growled Mr. Riderhood, rising to his feet, goaded to stand at bay, “when bullyers as is wearing dead men’s clothes, and bullyers as is armed with dead men’s knives, is to come into the houses of honest live men, getting their livings by the sweats of their brows, and is to make these here sort of charges with no rhyme and no reason, neither the one nor yet the other! Why should I have had my suspicions of him?”