"When I am comfortable," the old lady said, "nothing moves me, at my age. A murder up two pairs of stairs is nearly the same thing as a murder in the next house. Distance, you see, makes all the difference."It mattered little to the police what the lodgers did. We had men in plain clothes watching the house night and day. Everybody who went away was privately followed; and the police in the district to which they retired were warned to keep an eye on them, after that. As long as we failed to put Mrs. Zebedee's extraordinary statement to any sort of test--to say nothing of having proved unsuccessful, thus far, in tracing the knife to its purchaser--we were bound to let no person living under Mr. Crosscapel's roof, on the night of the murder, slip through our fingers.
IV.
IN a fortnight more, Mrs. Zebedee had sufficiently recovered to make the necessary statement--after the preliminary caution addressed to persons in such cases. The surgeon had no hesitation, now, in reporting her to be a sane woman.