Although apparently saved from a remarkable network of circumstantial
evidence, and no longer wanted for the murder of the Gimble woman,
the German police reasoned that Holz, if he had not fled because
of that crime, must have fled because of some other crime. So
the department, which has a name a couple of feet long, which in
English would mean, "the department for finding out everything about
everybody," kept on the trail.
Meantime the police of Hamburg got possession of Devel and examined
him. From the first they were uneasy. He confessed that he murdered
the woman to get her money, and beyond that would not tell anything.
It is not customary for the police to insist that a man who confesses
that he is guilty of murder shall prove it, but there were facts known
to the police which made them wonder how it was possible for Devel to
have killed the woman. They used the common police methods, and made
the prisoner talk. The more he talked the more apparent it became to
the police that he was innocent, although he still claimed vehemently
that he, and he alone, killed the Gimble woman.