“Yes, Sir,” says I, “I think I can.”

He put down the newspaper, and began to look rather anxious and frightened.

“Not my shopman?” says he.  “I hope, for the man’s own sake, it’s not my shopman.”

“Guess again, Sir,” says I.

“That idle slut, the maid?” says he.

“She is idle, Sir,” says I, “and she is also a slut; my first inquiries about her proved as much as that.  But she’s not the thief.”

“Then, in the name of Heaven, who is?” says he.

“Will you please to prepare yourself for a very disagreeable surprise, Sir?” says I.  “And in case you lose your temper, will you excuse my remarking, that I am the stronger man of the two, and that, if you allow yourself to lay hands on me, I may unintentionally hurt you, in pure self-defence?”

He turned as pale as ashes, and pushed his chair two or three feet away from me.

“You have asked me to tell you, Sir, who has taken your money,” I went on.  “If you insist on my giving you an answer”—­

“I do insist,” he said, faintly.  “Who has taken it?”

“Your wife has taken it,” I said, very quietly, and very positively at the same time.

He jumped out of the chair as if I had put a knife into him, and struck his fist on the table, so heavily that the wood cracked again.

“Steady, Sir,” says I.  “Flying into a passion won’t help you to the truth.”

“It’s a lie!” says he, with another smack of his fist on the table,—­“a base, vile, infamous lie!  How dare you”—­

He stopped, and fell back into the chair again, looked about him in a bewildered way, and ended by bursting out crying.

“When your better sense comes back to you, Sir,” says I, “I am sure you will be gentleman enough to make me an apology for the language you have just used.  In the mean time, please to listen, if you can, to a word of explanation.  Mr. Sharpin has sent in a report to our Inspector, of the most irregular and ridiculous kind; setting down, not only all his own foolish doings and sayings, but the doings and sayings of Mrs. Yatman as well.  In most cases, such a document would have been fit only for the waste-paper basket; but, in this particular case, it so happens that Mr. Sharpin’s budget of nonsense leads to a certain conclusion which the simpleton of a writer has been quite innocent of suspecting from the beginning to the end.  Of that conclusion I am so sure, that I will forfeit my place, if it does not turn out that Mrs. Yatman has been practising upon the folly and conceit of this young man, and that she has tried to shield herself from discovery by purposely encouraging him to suspect the wrong persons.  I tell you that confidently; and I will even go farther.  I will undertake to give a decided opinion as to why Mrs. Yatman took the money, and what she has done with it, or with a part of it.  Nobody can look at that lady, Sir, without being struck by the great taste and beauty of her dress”——­