' Quoth the prefect, 'What made thee kill him?' And
he replied, 'I came home last night and found this man who had
come down the windshaft to steal my goods; so I struck him with a
cudgel on the breast and he died. Then I took him up and carried
him to the market and set him up against the wall in such a
place. Is it not enough for me to have killed a Muslim, without
burdening my conscience with the death of a Christian also? Hang
therefore none but me.' When the prefect heard this, he released
the broker and said to the executioner, 'Hang up this man on his
own confession.' So he loosed the rope from the broker's neck and
threw it round that of the controller, and placing him under the
gallows, was about to hang him, when behold, the Jewish physician
pushed through the press and cried out, 'Stop! It was I and none
else who killed him! I was sitting at home last night, when a man
and a woman knocked at the door, carrying this hunchback, who was
sick, and gave my servant a quarter-dinar, bidding her give it to
me and tell me to come down to see him. Whilst she was gone, they
brought the hunchback into the house and setting him on the
stairs, went away. Presently, I came down and not seeing him,
stumbled on him in the dark, and he fell to the foot of the stair
and died forthright. Then we took him up, I and my wife, and
carried him on to the roof, whence we let him down, through the
windshaft, into the house of this controller, which adjoins my
own.
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