The words were these:
“Glad to see you back, sir. This murder following so close upon your visit must have been a great surprise. A sad occurrence, that, sir, and a very mysterious one. Hope you have some information to give.”
“If it is a remembrance and such words were uttered outside of my door last night,” argued the young detective to himself, “the guest who called them forth can be no other than the tall and florid gentleman whom I encountered in the barroom. But is it a remembrance, or only a chimera of my own overwrought brain struggling with a subject it will not let drop? As Shakespeare says, ‘That is the question!’ ”
Fortunately, it was not one which it behooved him to decide. So, for the twentieth time, he put the subject by and resolved to think of it no more.
But perplexities of this kind are not so easily dismissed, and more than once during his hurried and solitary breakfast, did he ask himself whether, in case the words were real, he had not found in the landlord of this very hotel the one witness for which the coroner was so diligently seeking.
A surprise awaited him after breakfast, in the sudden appearance at his room door of the very gentleman last alluded to.
“Ha, Byrd,” said he, with cheerful vivacity: “here is a line from the superintendent which may prove interesting to you.”
And with a complacent smile, Dr. Tredwell handed over a letter which had been brought to him by the detective who had that morning arrived from New York.
With a dim sense of foreboding which he would have found difficult to explain, Mr. Byrd opened the note and read the following words:
Dear Sir—I send with this a man fully competent to conduct a case of any ordinary difficulty. I acknowledge it is for our interest that you employ him to the exclusion of the person mentioned in your letter. But if you or that person think that he can render you any real assistance by his interference, he is at liberty to act in his capacity of detective in as far as he can do so without divulging too widely the secret of his connection with the force. ⸻.
“The superintendent need not be concerned,” said Mr. Byrd, returning the note with a constrained bow. “I shall not interfere in this matter.”
“You will miss a good thing, then,” remarked the coroner, shortly, looking keenly at the young man.
“I cannot help it,” observed the other, with a quick sigh of impatience or regret. “I should have to see my duty very clearly and possess the very strongest reasons for interfering before I presumed to offer either advice or assistance after a letter of this kind.”
“And who knows but what such reasons may yet present themselves?” ventured the coroner. Then seeing the young man shake his head, made haste to add in the businesslike tone of one preparing to take his leave, “At all events the matter stands open for the present; and if during the course of today’s inquiry you see fit to change your mind, it will be easy enough for you to notify me.” And without waiting for any further remonstrance, he gave a quick nod and passed hastily out.
The state of mind in which he left Mr. Byrd was anything but enviable. Not that the young man’s former determination to let this matter alone had been in any wise shaken by the unexpected concession on the part of the superintendent, but that the final hint concerning the inquest had aroused his old interest to quite a formidable degree, and, what was worse, had reawakened certain feelings which since last night it had been his most earnest endeavor to subdue. He felt like a man pursued by an implacable fate, and dimly wondered whether he would be allowed to escape before it was too late to save himself from lasting uneasiness, if not lifelong regret.
A final stroke of business for Mr. Ferris kept him at the courthouse most of the morning; but his duty in that direction being at an end, he no longer found any excuse for neglecting the task imposed upon him by the coroner. He accordingly proceeded to the cottage where the inquest was being held, and finding each and every available room there packed to its uttermost by interested spectators, took up his stand on the outside of a curtained window, where with but a slight craning of his neck he could catch a very satisfactory view of the different witnesses as they appeared before the jury. The day was warm and he was by no means uncomfortable, though he could have wished that the advantages of his position had occasioned less envy in the breasts of the impatient crowd that was slowly gathering at his back; or, rather, that their sense of these advantages might have been expressed in some more pleasing way than by the various pushes he received from the more or less adventurous spirits who endeavored to raise themselves over his shoulder or insinuate themselves under his arms.
The room into which he looked was the sitting-room, and it was, so far as he could judge in the first casual glance he threw into it, occupied entirely by strangers. This was a relief. Since it had become his duty to attend this inquiry, he wished to do so with a free mind, unhindered by the watchfulness of those who knew his interest in the affair, or by the presence of persons around whom his own imagination had involuntarily woven a network of suspicion that made his observation of them at once significant and painful.
The proceedings were at a standstill when he first came upon the scene.
A witness had just
